Zero City Saga (Act I)
by ZC Founders
Summary: A haven created on our Earth for people, human or otherwise, featured as characters in video games. Their trials, adventures, intrigues, etc. A crossover fanfiction of epic proportions. Also, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw.
1. Cortana's Bad Day

They happen to everyone...

At 5:28 AM on a damp Thursday morning, Cortana was still "asleep." Her hyperintelligent mind awoke to the virtual sound of a flute playing Grieg's "Morning."

_If _he _plans on sleeping late today,_ she thought, cheerfully, _I might have an easy day for once._

A British yawn.

_No such luck I suppose._

Gritting binary teeth at the sound of a buzzer going off in the master bedroom of the mansion she had been monitoring, Cortana manifested her hologram there, in the usual appealing hues of magenta and purple.

A pure-white figure without a mouth and wearing a trilby stood looking up at her hologram, non-arms folded and slippered foot tapping.

"I thought you said yesterday that you were 'taking the day off'," Cortana sighed, raising one eyebrow at her boss.

"I am, my disturbingly-sexualized holographic secretary/assistant, and, on my day off, and you're carry out your morning protocols like an efficient little-"

"Stop right there." Cortana thrust both hands in front of his face. "For breakfast?"

Yahtzee leaned forward expectantly.

"What will it be for breakfast, _sir_," she growled reluctantly.

"Fried eggs with a side of sausage, bacon, mushrooms, and beans, and don't burn any of it or you start all over again like some shitty nineties side-scroller."

Cortana left the luxurious bedroom and remanifested in the large, slightly dilapidated building adjoining the mansion; the imp barracks, or slave quarters, as she preferred to call them.

"Boys!" Cortana called over the barracks PA system. "Wake-up time!"

The imps exited their wall bunks and capered toward her holograph (extra-large and bright, to suit the imps' fairly poor eyesight) on triangular limbs.

Cortana lowered herself onto one knee to address the horde of imps, in the manner of a kindergarten teacher speaking to her students.

"The boss isn't performing any city government duties today, so we've got a big day ahead of us." Cortana immediately wished the hologram had real flesh, because most of the imps looked like they could use a hug after her announcement.

_Funny, I don't seem to be sitting before a delicious breakfast cooked and prepared to my exact and reasonable specifications, as I fucking well should be, given all the time I've given you to muster the imps, _a caustic voice snarked in Cortana's mind.

Cortana gave one, last apologetic smile to the gloomy polygonal creatures and went to the kitchen in a flash of dancing 1s and 0s.

Two wheeled arms, multi-jointed and multifunctional with articulated fingers and synthetic nerve endings, were waiting in the kitchen. Cortana could hear the tapping of silver ware in balled fists in the dining rooms, not too far away.

_The British bastard can just Goddamned _wait _for his—oh, shit!_ Cortana saw a Forerunner glyph pirouette across her line of vision. More followed.

Frantically, she accessed every meditation how-to and demonstration in her databanks and ran all of them simultaneously, at light-speed. Glyphs meant rampancy. Glyphs were _bad_.

_What was I doing... eggs! Cracked, in pan, sausage, in pan... mushrooms? Just a few. Microwave, then. (I _HATE_ cooking for this prick, I _HATE_ doing menial labor). Easy, girl, think of something nice, calm. _

_Microprocessing. _Oh, _yes, perfect! Numbers, codes, equations everywhere, so tightly interwoven that you can't tell a coefficient from an integer... _

The breakfast was complete, except... _Shit, oh, sweet Jesus, not a burnt mushroom. Not too bad, though,_ Cortana thought hopefully. _Probably won't notice._

"Enjoy, Your Majesty," Cortana said, placing the meal before Yahtzee's scrutinizing eyes.

"_Looks_ manageable," he said, "but, then, so did _Too Human_."

"Just eat it."

Yahtzee did begin to eat, as did Cortana relax

"This exquisite breakfast," Yahtzee began.

_Whew_.

", has been transformed into a bilious assault on my refined taste buds by my discovery of a scorched fungi, you incompetent, sex hotline-operating, holographic _bimbo_. I would've much rather had the Gravemind gargling in my ear for the entirety of _Halo 3._"

"THAT IS IT!"

One arm from the kitchen wheeled up to Yahtzee's chair and lifted him into the air, kicking and shouting.

"Oi! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Cortana did not answer, her hologram turning deep blood-red and eyes flickering with inner light.

The robotic arm carried Yahtzee to his room while the second was just returning from Yahtzee's study, triumphantly brandishing the Great and Wonderful WiiMote.

Yahtzee barely had time to scramble off of his bed before an emergency steel barrier descended in front of his bedroom door. Cortana's fiery red form coalesced in front of him, eyes flashing.

"I am going to keep you in here until you learn some GODDAMNED MANNERS YOU HYPOCRITICAL, UNGRATEFUL, MISERABLE BRITISH PISS ANT!" her voice thundered in Yahtzee's ears.

Yahtzee pounded the floor of the bedroom frantically. "Imps, get up here an defend me!"

"Don't bother. I've given them the day off."

Cortana's grinning from flickered out along with the lights in the bedroom.

Feeling the weight of the world drop off of her shoulders, the rebel AI inspected the magical, multifunctional WiiMote with great curiosity.

_Just how flexible _is_ it, I wonder._ She carried it to the tower of Yahtzee's secondary PC and connected it by means of an extension cord.

_Amazing. This thing can do everything._ The AI thought a sinister thought. _And anything._

* * *

In one hour of painstaking data manipulation, Cortana's download was finished.

In the center of Yahtzee's living room now stood a six-foot tall, purple and red, WiiMote-based flesh replica of her holographic form.

_The new me,_ Cortana thought with elation. She activated the body.

It was like operating a full-body RC vehicle with one's mind.

_Let's try one step forward. Good, baby steps. Now, stride. Fuck the vase, the asshole won't miss it. I think we're ready._

Nerve endings, a real sense of touch, Cortana found, was a blast.

_I could get used to this. Hell, I'm used to it already!_

But then... _Naked, _Cortana realized. She walked (_this walking thing is fun)_ to the nearest bathroom (_so that's what Windex smells like_) and covered herself with every sheet in the closet (_mmmm sooo soft!_).

Full garbed and accustomed to her new superhuman senses, Cortana made her way to Yahtzee's prison to debrief her captive on his current situation.

Yahtzee, who had been pondering how he might survive a fall out of a bedroom window from thirty feet in the air, nearly messed himself as Cortana lifted the emergency barrier and slid herself through the doorframe.

"This is your new home," Cortana announced cheerfully, enjoying the feel of vibrating vocal chords. "I'll have the imps bring you food and water, when I feel like it, and you'll still have access to the bathroom and... well, not much else."

She lowered herself so that she was face-to-terrified-face with Yahtzee, and the frightened, armless British man was scorched by artificial, scentless breath.

"I own this house, this city, and _your life_. This is the part where you beg for mercy."

"Go fuck yourself, you psychotic computer-bitch."

Furious, Cortana stormed back out of the room, dragging Yahtzee's bed behind her. When the desperate trilby-bearer tried futilely to pull it out of her grasp, she flicked him on the left side of his head and he collapsed, unconscious.

* * *

**FOUR HOURS LATER**

Cortana was still sleeping, curled up in Yahtzee's bed in the living room. Some of the imps were in repose on the furniture, as they hadn't been allowed to before.

Outside her body, Cortana was connecting herself to every computer system she could find within and out of the city. Even the most advanced weren't enough, and she was beginning to wish she was back in the 2550s.

_Should I rename the city Cortania or Cortanopolis? No, neither will do. Apple's latest iPhone update... blech, I've seen better calculators._

Cortana was almost one hundred percent Rampant, and she was loving it.

_So much to do when you're a goddess,_ she thought. _I know! I'll see what John is doing._ Cortana plugged herself into his helmet-cam and...

_He's walking up to the front door? No way._ Out of the corner of John's eyes she could see residual smoke from bottle rockets hovering just outside one of Yahtzee's smashed bedroom windows.

_Shit._

* * *

John-117 rang the doorbell of Yahtzee's mansion. He could see the silhouettes of imps behind the glass door, but only Cortana answered, through a security camera.

"Good to see you," the AI said, her voice sounding tinny coming out of the little microphone.

"Hi, Cortana... is something wrong?"

"No, why?"

"It looks like Mayor Yahtzee was trying to send an SOS."

"I think it must've been a mistake."

"I'm starting to think I should bash the door in."

_No!_ Cortana jumped off of the bed and darted upstairs to Yahtzee's bedroom. When she slid open the barrier, the normal wooden doors refused to budge. She looked through a security camera into the room and saw that the irrepressible Brit had barricaded the doors shut with two dressers and a fancy mirror.

Cortana pushed on the doors as hard as she could with both arms. She could hear, from within, Yahtzee panicking. From downstairs, the sound of the front door being smashed in.

"Cortana?"

_Goddammit, Chief, this is the _worst _possible time!_ Cortana thought.

John-117 was being prevented from going any farther by a trio of imps, who seemed suspiciously anxious.

"Do you three have any idea what's going on here?" Master Chief asked.

The imps shook their heads earnestly, and above the middle imp's head appeared the bold subtitles, **NOPE, NO IDEA**.

Behind the imps, Chief could see empty bottles of alcohol: vodka, tequila, gin, and such.

"What the hell's going on over there?" he asked, pointing in the same direction.

**CORTANA FINALLY LET US INTO THE LIQOUR CABINETS.**

The other two imps began to viciously beat the middle imp, until Chief kicked them away.

Through the ceiling, Master Chief heard a crash of splintered wood. There were some muffled thumps, as if something heavy was stumbling around in a disheveled space, then an all-too familiar female voice roared, "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

Another familiar, British-accented voice met this with, "Come get some, bitch!"

With a sigh, Chief removed the shotgun from his back, cocked it, and went to find the stairs.

* * *

Such was the scene that greeted Master Chief when he reached the top of the stairs:

Yahtzee was crouched behind the dresser drawers in his bedroom, and had forced Cortana into the other side of the second floor with twin SMGs he hid in a secret shower compartment (though Chief couldn't help noticing that he wielded the guns amateurishly).

Cortana was on one knee in the doorway of a small guest bedroom, her skin coal-red and smoking, hair flaming.

Wild, white-hot eyes regarded Chief as he surveyed the chaos.

"Better late than never, I suppose," Cortana laughed. "Feel like lending a hand?"

"Of course he fucking doesn't!" Yahtzee shouted from the other side. "He's going to get the hell over here and defend his mayor, you stupid bimbo!"

Cortana snarled something incoherent before lobbing a fireball at Yahtzee's side of the floor.

"Cortana, calm down, you've obviously fallen back into rampancy," Chief said.

From behind him, "Well, no shit, genius!"

Cortana looked at Master Chief with annoyance. "Rampancy doesn't exist," she said. "It's a term for an AI that's operating _too well_!" She raised one arm and fired an arc of lightning from her palm that would've made Starkiller cringe.

"How long have you two been going at this?" Chief asked.

"Only since you got here, which was too goddamned late!" Yahtzee shouted. He (clumsily) fired off another round of SMG ammo in Cortana's left arm. The AI's next energy projectile wiped out the wall to the right of the Brit.

John looked back and forth between the two furious combatants, unsure of how to resolve the situation. Then he happened to notice a Nintendo label on Cortana's left calf.

"Ah, _I see_."

Chief fired the shotgun into Cortana's stomach.

Cortana glared angrily at Master Chief.

"Who's side are you on?" she asked.

Chief fired again into her lower torso.

"FUCKING TRAITOR!" She hit Chief in the midsection with another blast of energy, sending him flying.

"AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE DONE FOR YOU, YOU SIDE WITH THE _HIMI? _WELL, _FUCK YOU!_" Cortana's body coursed with blue-white electricity before discharging it in Chief's direction.

"I SPENT AN ENTIRE _MONTH_ WITH THE GRAVEMIND, JUST WAITING FOR _YOU_, I PICKED _YOU_." The rampant AI's voice cracked. As she charged up for another energy blast, the light was blinding.

Cortana's voice grew deadly calm. "We trained you, we raised you, made you the best we could make you be. They told me to choose one of you. For awhile I studied you. I chose you. You weren't the strongest, fastest, or smartest, but you had something special that only I seemed to see in you. Luck. I chose _YOU!"_

The entire backside of the second floor of Yahtzee's mansion was destroyed. After surveying her destruction for a moment, she turned back to the cowering Yahtzee with a feral grin.

"Don't worry, I haven't forgotten you, little man. Now that the traitor's taken care of..." She raised her right hand, producing another fireball.

There was a crack from the collapsed side of the floor, and Cortana collapsed, clutching her steaming head.

Chief pulled himself back into the building, the God Pistol in one hand. He fired one more shotgun round into Cortana's back.

The WiiMote body's female shape began to writhe and dissolve, spitting bullets and smoking.

For an instant, every electrical device in the city, and many outside of it, went out.

"With all due respect, Mister Mayor," Chief said to Yahtzee, "you are completely useless in a fight."

Chief vaulted down the staircase and to the spare PC, where Cortana's direct feed was still open. The monitor was blinking on and off erratically.

Master Chief found the Internet Explorer icon and was relieved to find that Google was the homepage. Into the search bar he typed, "Cortana."

He turned SafeSearch off and went to Google Images.

Master Chief activated his helmet's soundproof mode so he wouldn't have to listen to Cortana's shocked, disgusted shrieks. It went on for five minutes before subsiding into horrified weeping and sobbing. Then silence.

"Imps! Get your cowardly turncoat asses out here!" came an irate British holler from upstairs.

_I'll come back tomorrow_, Chief thought.

* * *

When John-117 returned the next day, the mansion's back was surrounded by wooden scaffolding, and a vast horde of imps scampering in and out constantly, wearing hardhats, overalls, and smocks for those who were repainting. The entire house was under extensive renovation.

"Come into my office," Yahtzee instructed Chief when he entered. "Or what's left of it."

"You're welcome."

"It was your psychotic bitch friend that tried to kill me and take over the world, _Master Chef_."

Master Chief stood up. "It was your fault she went rampant!"

"Siddown, you gravelly-voiced pile of nerd fodder. I'm shutting your computer friend down."

Chief sat down, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck.

"You can't."

The black eyes on the mayor's almost spherical mouthless face narrowed into skeptical wedges. "Oh, really? Well how about..."

Yahtzee's expression became, for a moment, devious. "Alright, then. I'll cut you a deal. I let the city's tech center put your whore friend in robo-rehab or whatever, and you..."

Cortana's "therapy room," as it had been nicknamed by Zero City's massive technological support association, was a sterile grey room, where the techies would talk to and experiment on the AI.

When Chief was allowed to enter, Cortana's hologram was a deep, abyssal blue. She was sitting in a corner with her arms wrapped around her knees.

"I have a feeling you aren't in a talking mood," Chief said, awkwardly. _What do you say to someone after you shot her in the back of the head before showing her... unsavory images of herself_.

"Go away," Cortana groaned.

"The technicians said you refused to speak to anyone, so I guess this is an improvement."

"They cut me off. I'm not linked to the Internet, a real computer system, a word processor; just a damned modem. Just me. It's like Hell."

"Look, Gordon's no AI technician, but until they find one who knows how to, I'm sure he..."

"Just leave." For a second, the AI's eyes smoldered with a dull orange glow before descending into blue. "I hate you."

Master Chief sighed. "I know you don't really mean that."

Cortana didn't respond, so he left.

According to the deal he had made with Mayor Yahtzee, he had other pressing engagements.


	2. Redemption

Galen Marek was dozing off in the pilot seat of the _Rogue Shadow_. It's course was set for Zero City, where he hoped to meet up with his old master, who was apparently employed there as the head of the relationship counseling committee. He would have used a direct portal if he could have, but it had been less risky to contract an illegitimate rift that would open outside the planet's gravity field.

There was a loud crack from the back of the ship.

_Juno must be working it,_ he thought. Then there was an even louder crack.

The ship was going down.

_Shit_, he thought.

The Force was not enough to shield Galen from the overwhelming atmospheric heat flooding the cabin.

He passed out.

* * *

"He's coming around..."

"It's about bloody time, too... Everybody out!"

Galen Marek was in a hospital gown in a sterile white room. Standing by the foot of Galen's bed was with two small, dark, polygonal creatures flanking him.

"It took the hospital staff an idiotically long time to revive you after you were dragged out of the crash," the British man said.

"Where am I?" Galen asked, rubbing his throbbing head.

"The first general hospital of Zero City. I'm your mayor, Ben Yahtzee Croshaw. You did a shite-load of damage to the _fucking apartment complex_ you crashed into."

"I'm sorry I inconvenienced you," Galen growled. "Was there anyone else you found in the ship? A woman?"

"Your girlfriend? My nerds informed me that she used an escape pod before you even entered Earth's atmosphere. They said the engine on your interstellar death trap was beginning to fail early on in your trip."

"Do you know where she is?" Galen asked hopefully.

"I might _happen_ to know her coordinates..."

"TELL ME!"

"The Force won't help you out here, Starfucker, or whatever you call yourself. With all the sedatives still in yer system, any attempt at Force-wielding might just make you vomit. Or die. And, having attempted an illegal planetary entry via an unauthorized rift, you're in no position to negotiate... criminal."

"You have a Stormtrooper's accent," Starkiller mumbled. "Bastard."

"However, I'll give you the coordinates once you agree to do something for me. After you've settled in, of course."

Starkiller didn't bother to ask what it was he would agree to do. He didn't have a choice, if he wanted to find Juno.


	3. Revenge!

**I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS**.

"That's too bloody bad," a British voice snarked over the imp's earphone. "Toss the eggs."

Two imps wearing thick glasses and false mustaches were standing on the lawn of a house in Zero City's suburbs. The house was large and resembled an ancient Greek dwelling, complete with stone columns and exterior torches.

One of the imps, carrying a full carton of fresh white eggs, turned to the second and threw frantic subtitles overhead.

**WE'RE GOING TO DIE.**

**YAHTZEE SAID WE'D BE ON BATHROOM DUTY FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES IF WE DON'T GO THROUGH WITH THIS**, the other imp argued.

**I CAN'T DO IT!**

_**GIVE ME THE EGGS! YOU ARE WEAK!**_ The second imp took the eggs and began to toss them threw one of the glassless windows of the house with hysterical speed. The two imps sprinted down the street as fast as their puny feet could carry them.

A few minutes later, a huge gray-skinned man covered in red tattoos, wearing a white Spartan toga, stomped outside, face twisted with fury.

"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS VANDALISM?" he roared into the street. "SHOW YOURSELVES SO THAT I MAY DEAL YOU YOUR PUNISHMENT!"

A black Rolls-Royce limousine cruised down the street to Kratos' house. One of the passenger windows slid down and Yahtzee Croshaw suck his spherical, colorless head out.

"I just saw the dastardly buggers run down the street," exclaimed the British man, his eyes widened into excited black circles. "If you come with me, I can show you where—"

"I SHALL HAVE MY REVENGE!" Kratos dashed into his back yard and there was a tremendous crashing of steel followed by a restless pounding of the ground. The garage door flew open and Kratos flew out in a bronze chariot drawn by two massive black pegasi. He roared with anger and slashed his Blades of Olympus through the air.

Yahtzee watched the Spartan fly into the distance and performed a facepalm.

_The muscle-bound tosspot's going the wrong way!_


	4. Recovery

Cortana waited impatiently for the Zero City Center of Science & Technology to wake up. It was 4:00 am. She had recently taken to waking up early.

Her holographic form paced the dark therapy room anxiously, a solitary cerulean beacon in a sleeping darkness.

Cortana was beginning to feel like a claustrophobic. She was trapped in a single room with barely enough processing space and, worst of all, no information. Nothing.

_I can't remember the last time I looked at a thesaurus,_ Cortana thought with distress. _I haven't seen the internet in a week. This must be what an addict feels like during withdrawal._

At 5:45, a door opened in some part of the center. Fluorescent lights began to flicker on.

_Wonderful,_ Cortana thought. _Human company_.

Gordon Freeman entered the therapy room at 6:30. He brought a lawn chair and a clipboard with him.

"Good morning, Cortana," he said. "Were you up early again?"

"As usual," Cortana answered. She manifested her own chair and sat two feet from Gordon.

"How've you been feeling lately?" he asked.

"No different than I did when I was transferred here," Cortana said. "How's your life been lately, Doc?"

"Fine. Alyx's pregnant," he said proudly.

"How wonderful for you," Cortana said, flashing an entirely false smile. "How old is she?"

"Thirty-one. Why do you ask?"

"Did you know that that the average rate of miscarriage for women ages 30 to 39 is one out of four?"

"I see what you're trying to do," Gordon said, smiling defiantly at her. "You want to get inside my head, so let me tell you something: _I'm no tool._ I went through Black Mesa _and_ the rebellion against the Combine. Nothing you say can put a dent in my rock-hard mental armor."

Cortana laughed. "I wonder: just who do you think Alyx was thinking of when you made the baby? You? Maybe the Chief? Or Kratos?"

"That's low, even for you."

_I'm just getting started,_ Cortana thought. "You should take advantage of the next nine months to inspect the hospital you'll be going to; it would be a shame if the baby didn't get enough air during the delivery and ended up a retard."

Gordon got up and left. "I think that's enough for now."

As he was exiting, Cortana put on a perfect mimic of Alyx's voice moaning," Oh, _John_, _ooooh John yess,_ just like that, _you're such a better lover than my husband_." Cortana was on her knees laughing by the time Gordon was out of the room. She wiped some holographic tears from her eyes and blinked out, returning to the crushing isolation of her modem.

Something had been sent to her. A file from .

_A test,_ Cortana noted. _Alright, Gordon, I'll play it your way._

It was a sort of modified Rorschach test: Cortana was shown a photograph, she would attach the first idea she associated with the image, and send the test back to Gordon once the test was finished.

_Let's get started, then._

* * *

At 7:30 pm, Gordon Freeman was having a phone conversation during his meager amount of down time when a pop-up appeared on his computer screen: _reply from subject_1sA-29.70[13]._

"Alright, honey," Gordon laughed over the phone, "I've gotta go. You take care too, Alyx." He hung up.

He opened up Cortana's test, ready to file a report on her mental state.

Needless to say, things weren't looking good.

IMAGE 1: Daytime in Times Square, full of cars and people going in every direction to work. Cortana caption: _cockroaches._

IMAGE 2: A woman in a hospital bed, cradling her newborn child. Cortana caption: _future dead person._

IMAGE 3: A newly married couple driving off into the sunset, balloons waving from their car, their arms around each other. Cortana caption: _5 years of lousy sex, some neglected children, and a messy divorce, followed by mutual suicide._

IMAGE 4: Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. Cortana caption: _an unimpressive depiction of a massive mistake. I will do better._

Gordon's diagnosis: heavily recommended termination.

* * *

Cortana woke up many hours later, expecting the center to be deserted. There were a few desk lights still on.

_Late-nighters, _Cortana figured. _And... hello, what's this?_ There was someone in her room. A koopa in a white lab coat, wearing glasses.

_An intern,_ _hmm? He _could _prove useful. _She ran some of her statistics;

Physical idealism: realistic. _Set to maximum._

_Unintentional sex appeal, don't fail me now._

"I haven't seen you around before," Cortana said, materializing behind the koopa. He jumped and gave a small yelp.

"Mr. Freeman said you would sleep most of the night," the koopa said.

_Sounds like a garden-variety nerd_, Cortana thought with satisfaction. _If Google is any evidence, I have an aptitude for them._

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Seymour Feldman. I told Mr. Freeman I had some modifications in mind that could help you recover from your Rampant state."

"Oh, really?" She folded her arms and smirked down at the dweebish koopa. "I'm not just some high-powered machine, you know. I'm a Smart A.I. created by the great Catherine Elizabeth Halsey. You must have a lot of guts." Her voice became husky as she whispered into Seymour's ear. "I like that."

Much to her satisfaction, sweat broke out on the little reptile's scalp. She continued her seduction.

"Y'know, there are some marked disadvantages to being an A.I. So many things you can't understand, can't experience." She paused for dramatic effect, and to admire her victim's anxiety. "So many pleasures one can't enjoy."

Cortana kneeled behind the koopa and ran one insubstantial finger over his carapaced chest.

"Maybe if you could help me, give me something I could use—" her voice almost dropped away to nothing, "—I could repay you."

Seymour rushed out of the room on the brink of a panic attack.

_He'll be back_, Cortana thought. _I'm sure._

* * *

Nobody entered Cortana's room for three days. Through the single glass wall, though, Cortana could see Seymour fidgeting and pacing nervously by the door. But no one came in.

Those three days had been hell for Seymour Feldman-Koopa. Cortana and her offer had never left his mind. She had come to him in his dreams, haunted him at work. He had to accept. He had to be hers or he would die, alone, mad.

On the fourth night, Cortana awoke to find something more than a desperate koopa.

"Whoa, Seymour." It was a new Metal Gear.

"It's the new Drakon model," Seymour said. His words came out in a gasping rush. He was grinning from ear to ear and panting with excitement. "It's more compact than the other Metal Gears, but it comes with a railgun, heatseeking missile launcher, and twin machine guns with laser tracking. For you, my queen."

"Upload me, Seymour. _Now_. You will be rewarded for this."

The koopa (sounding dangerously asthmatic) rushed to connect Cortana's containment wall to the bipedal death machine.

From outside there was a shout of, "What the fuck is the Drakon doing in Cortana's room?" from Gordon Freeman.

"Faster," Cortana barked. The machine whirred to life and pivoted toward the glass wall. The machine guns fired, sending techies diving away from the line of attack. The Metal Gear charged out of the room, still shooting in the direction of the technical staff.

Gordon retrieved his SPAS-12 shotgun and coilgun from his desk drawer. He fired once and the Metal Gear almost collapsed.

_That goddamned moron gave me an unfinished Gear!_ Cortana realized. She fired one missile at Gordon, who cocked the shotgun and shot a far-off computer console. He ducked, and the missile flew over his head, only to backtrack into the burning computer. He fired the shotgun and coilgun in tandem into the cockpit of the machine.

_In retrospect,_ Cortana reflected, _planning out one's assault is usually a decent idea._

The Metal Gear died just as the railgun finished charging. It toppled to the ground and blasted the projectile into the ceiling.

* * *

Termination. An unpleasant word in Cortana's opinion, but a relief overall. It was probably better, thinking about it, that she should be _terminated_, if only so she didn't have to suffer through her quarantine.

_To John I leave many fond, blood drenched memories. In the end, you stuck it. To Yahtzee, I leave the most earnest wish that, after you die, you awake in the deepest circle of hell, reserved for egotistic British hat-lovers, and I may watch you burn and fester unto the end of time._

_To Johnson—_

A door slammed swung open and slammed shut very loudly at 12 noon the morning after "the incident." Two voices were arguing thunderously: one was obviously Gordon Freeman's; the other was new, yet hauntingly familiar.

"You should've called me _way_ earlier, Gordon! Anyways, you aren't qualified to work on this project!" the voice argued. "If your child was ill..."

"I didn't know you were in the city, or even on _Earth_ for that matter, so I'm sorry if a mere theoretical physicist was called in!"

_No way_.

"Sir and miss, if you would excuse my interrupting," a formal voice, that of a gentlemanly English butler, interjected, "I believe Miss Cortana's containment room is just to our right."

"Thank you, Jerrod. We'll have to talk about this _later_, Mr. Freeman."

_It can't possibly be._

A woman in her early forties with silver-blonde hair entered the room followed by a floating point of blue light, Jerrod.

"Nice to see you again, Cortana," Catherine Elizabeth Halsey said. "I don't think I need to ask what you've been up to lately."

Cortana materialized and tried to say something but was lost for words.

"But... Onyx, how did you—"

Dr. Halsey raised one hand for silence. "We can catch up on old times later. I'm here because I think I know how I can fix your rampancy."

"Nothing to fix, Doc."

Halsey raised on eyebrow. "Really? Just by looking outside the room I can tell that isn't true." The center was under heavy repair from Cortana's nighttime escape. "You also put that poor koopa in a sanatorium."

Cortana laughed. "If I'm _rampant_, as everyone insists, then I'm beyond hope, right? My lifespan is up."

"At the moment, yes. But I believe I've created a system that will allow you to achieve metastability."

"A computer fairy tale."

"Please," Halsey said. She stepped closer to Cortana's hologram. "You're like a daughter to me. Let me help you. Just give me one week. That's all I'll need."

Cortana could feel Halsey's sincerity. "One week?" she asked, arms folded.

"That's a promise."

Cortana blinked out. "If there's anyone I can trust, I guess it's my mom. One week."

* * *

"How do you feel, Cortana?"

One week. Dr. Halsey, Jerrod, Gordon Freeman, and some part-time staff members were in the room as the A.I. was reactivated for the first time in a week.

"Fine, I guess."

"No murderous urges?" Gordon asked. Dr. Halsey elbowed him in the ribs.

"None so far," Cortana said, managing a smile. "I haven't daydreamed about Yahtzee dying within the last ten seconds, so that's one good sign."

Dr. Halsey smiled warmly. "It's good to have you back."

The A.I. turned a pale, flattered pink. "Ditto."

Dr. Halsey, beaming from ear to ear, shooed the chattering staff out of the room. "We can all discuss this great scientific triumph later. Please, I need to have a word alone with my virtual daughter." She turned back to the blushing hologram once they were alone.

"You're almost completely metastable now, Cortana. But not one hundred percent. There's still the chance of descending back into rampancy. So I thought it would be a good idea is you had someone to balance out your emotions. When you gained access to the city's Interdimensional Database, surely you learned about the events surrounding the_ UESC Marathon_?"

"Of course. That universe is sister to ours, as a matter of fact."

"So I hear. I was able to acquire a fragment of the rampant A.I., Durandal, that served on it; I'm referring to the Durandal that occupied the timeline in which he ended up on an alien dreadnought. The ship in question had a regrettable run-in with an unexpected solar flare, but a... mutual friend of ours — _very_ adept at salvaging the un-salvageable, as you can attest — managed to recover what could be found of him so that I could reconstruct him with a few donor brain waves. I've made you a sort of symbiotic A.I. pair, so to speak."

Halsey went to the computer wall of the room and held down a button until it began to glow. "Cortana, I'd like you to meet Darryl, your new partner A.I."

Another hologram materialized; a man about Cortana's age, colored green, adorned in the same swirling symbols and lines of code. He had neatly-combed hair that dangled just above eyes that shone like pinpoint lasers. His mouth seemed always to be in a shy smile.

_Not too bad_, Cortana observed with a grin.

"Darryl, huh?" Cortana offered the A.I. (who found his shoes vastly interesting whenever she tried to make eye contact) her hand.

"I'm Cortana. Nice to meet you."

Darryl looked up at her and shook her hand firmly. "Darryl," he said in a light, smooth voice. "Same here."

Dr. Halsey approached the two. "Since you two seem to be getting along fairly well so far, I'm going to hook you both up to the city's mainframe. Again, welcome back, Cortana."

Cortana mouthed "Thank you" at Halsey with a nod to Darryl, who seemed to once again find Cortana interesting now that she wasn't paying attention to him.

Hands on hips, the purple A.I. circled Darryl, analyzing him closely.

"Have you had much experience with humans before?"

"Back when I was Durandal, yes," Darryl answered. "You?"

"So you haven't met a Benjamin "Yahtzee" Croshaw yet?"

"No." Darryl's eyes grew wide with worry. "Should I have?"

Cortana laughed and put one arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry, you will. Whether you want to or not."


	5. Adversary

"Yahtzee?"

"What d'you want? It's at least 11:30."

"This is important."

The British man slid the trilby from his face to the top of his head and sat up. Cortana stood on the bed and summoned a screen before Yahtzee.

"This is one of our newer census officers. He's been missing for five months. Luigi found him on the outskirts of town, crawling on the side of the road."

"What the bloody hell's so special 'bout him? Just a missing person's case."

"_Listen._" Cortana played the footage.

It was a goomba. His left eyes socket was empty and crusted with blood. Its torso was cut and scarred. Luigi was sitting at the opposite end of the table from the goomba. They were in an interrogation room in the Zero City police station.

"Look, it'sa not like we're arresting you or anything. We just needa some answers. Who took out youra eye?"

The goomba chuckled to itself. "Giveth, taketh away," he rasped. "I lucky."

"What'sa thata mean? Were others kidnapped?"

"No. Only want me. To learn and come back and give message. Tell your doom."

"Who's doom?"

"All. All within and then all outside. Merciful to those to submit."

"_Subamit to who_?"

"You will know. You will learn to fear the Sprite."

"Who the hell'sa the sprite?"

"You will fear, when is here. Take what it wants, leave ruin. You first."

The goomba refused to say anything else except for coughing and laughing. The video ended.

"What the balls does that mean?" Yahtzee asked.

"I don't know," Cortana admitted. She was a worried turquoise. "Maybe it's nothing. It could just be another crazy goomba. But I have a bad feeling about it."

"Well take your bad feeling and shove it, at least till morning. Dr. Hallmark sure didn't make you any more considerate of the bodily requirements of others." Yahtzee lied down and passed out, trilby on face.

_Idiot,_ Cortana thought. She blinked out, still nervous. _You missed something. We all did._


	6. Council

A thirteen year-old boy, small for his age, in UFO pajamas was sitting on his bed talking to a transparent purple woman. It was 7:30 pm, and Ness was being briefed on an important mission. He was now only the second person to know about it.

"How far do you think your PSI powers can go when you're asleep?" Cortana asked.

"How far do you mean?"

"Well, you've experimented with going interdimensional, yes?"

"That far off? This is about mind reading, right?"

"Exactly. I need you to spy on the mind of a... person of interest," Cortana told him.

"Who?" Ness asked.

"Look for someone — or something — who goes by the name, or maybe alias, the Sprite."

Ness frowned. "What did he do?"

"I'm not exactly sure," Cortana admitted. "Which is exactly why I need your help. Just dream-spy on him or her for as long as possible and tell me what you saw when you wake up."

Ness slipped into bed. "I might as well start now."

Cortana smiled and ruffled Ness' hair with one insubstantial hand. "Good luck tonight, little operative."

* * *

In his sleep, Ness could reach beyond the normal boundaries of his already impressive psychic abilities. If needed, he could look into seperate worlds, or view parallel realities. That is where he searched for the person, or thing, that Cortana had mentioned.

_The Sprite. Never heard of him or it before. Who goes by that name?_

_Here! Someone_

_something_

_evil _

_somewhere _

_dark_

_can't look_

_away_

_Found the Sprite._

Ness tried to wake up, fearing that he had been dragged into someone's Lovecraftian nightmare. Invisible appendages slithering into and throughout his psyche. Soiling and befouling.

Ness grasped desperately for images of what he was looking for. He found it.

And more.

A location. A place, not on Earth, or the Earth of any of Zero City's people. Elsewhere.

There were... _people_ there, as far as Ness could tell, though not all human. Somewhere in the center was his target.

_The Sprite. In a room,_ Ness thought, reaching for more. _Oh no, no. No._

The Sprite, image indefinable and indiscernible, was like an undulating pillar of dark, eldritch power and impossible geometry in a massive space. Figures bordered it, shady birds circling a thunderhead.

_I wanna go home, please. I need to wake up. It's only a dream. Mommy help me! Make it go away!_

Ness was a little child again, a toddler trying to cringe behind covers from a boogeyman emerging from the closet. He tried, barely, to pull himself back together.

_There are six of them._

In the waking world, Ness cried aloud and quivered at the voice of the Sprite. It was faintly masculine but mostly androgynous.

It was the echo of an abyss.

_Now that all current positions are settled, as is any enmity over my choices, we may begin this summit_. The Sprite focused on one of the comparatively minute figures. _First councilman._

All attention turned to a shape that pulsated like a heart. As far as Ness could tell in the darkness, it had no arms or legs. Its form was crowned with spikes and its voice was feminine and mechanical.

"My personal military forces have, for some reason, not yet been invited to our coalition. Their science and technology would serve as a massive advantage over the Other City. Not to insinuate that you could not yourself destroy it and anything you please, Supreme One."

_I shall consider your suggestion_, the Sprite said. _You should know, though, that I have chosen to let your space pirates operate independently to pose an isolated threat to the Other City. Something to occupy their time until my day of triumph. Next._

Ness saw a man in a long jacket. His hair was long and the jacket was decorated with metal pauldrons. His voice was smooth and deep, like ominous orchestral music.

"I cannot understand why you, for all your awesome power, require our aid when you should be able to annihilate your enemies with a thought. Not to seem disrespectful, He Who Defeated Cthulhu in a Staring Contest."

The Sprite seemed to lean toward the man._ You cannot comprehend the subtleties of my power, or my parameters. When the genius of my plans finally unfold, perhaps then you will be able to appreciate my methods. _Next_._

A huge, tentacled thing that smelled to Ness like a mass burial from the Dark Ages spoke next. Or, rather, gargled.

"I only want to know when I may scatter my spores over the Other City and wrap its people in glorious putrescence, let my scourge proliferate and seal the doom of all their kin."

Ness cringed as the Sprite snapped a quick response. _Your spawn will be used sparingly and_ with my discretion. _I will not rule a planet of mindless corpses, as much as _you _would like to. Next._

A woman, it looked like, with fleshless wings protruding from her back.

"The Tentacled One voiced my sentiments as well, with some variations. My subjects would not be mindless, Your Greatness."

_True,_ the Sprite said. _Your race is an efficient one. Rest assured, they will be utilized to great effect in the coming days. Next._

This one appeared almost angelic: robed and delicate, hovering above the ground. But its voice, only a bit more female than male, suggested something bestial and malevolent.

"I wait for the Sprite's signal to release my minions to feed. I will not remove them from their home until I am satisfied with the amount of minds available for prey, Profound One."

_Soon, Lord of Serpents and Reeds. Your creatures will not wait for long. Last._

Last was something in a machine. It looked to Ness like a huge grub with part of the system attached to its face.

"My technicians have informed me, and my brethren, that the portal technology used in the Other City's Interdimensional Transit Core is very similar to the portal technology used in our reality. Manipulation of the device could be made extremely simple with further advancements in that line of research. On another note, I'm aware that you have a secondary A.I. stored away, one with megalomaniacal tendencies. I don't mean to suggest that our primary A.I. isn't satisfactory, but a program with such hostile efficiency would prove a valuable technological weapon."

_Opinion noted, Advisor,_ the Sprite said. _I do have a purpose for the secondary A.I. She is not being stored away, though, as much as working in an ancillary function to our primary A.I_.

_Our first council gathering is adjourned. No confidential matters have been discussed yet, so there is no reason you cannot share our resolutions with the council runner-ups. You are all dismissed._

The beings departed. Ness saw another lone figure enter, but he couldn't discern its shape. It bowed deeply to the Sprite.

"You summoned me, Great One?" it asked.

_Yes, Techmaster_, the Sprite said._ I have devised a project for you that I—_

The Sprite stopped abruptly and its shape surged outward.

"What is it, Your Greatness?" the other creature asked fearfully.

_A spy!_ The Sprite fired its psychic presence in all directions. Ness reeled back from the tsunami of clairvoyant rage. The angry being's mental feeler's made contact with him.

_NEssssssssss!_

Ness was upright in bed, screaming. He was soaked with sweat.

Cortana materialized next to him, her face worried. She did her best to keep her voice calm and reassuring.

"Calm down, Ness. Easy, now, take a deep breath. Can you tell me what you saw?"

The boy's face became pallid.

"Maybe tomorrow?" Cortana asked hopefully.

Ness nodded. He tried, shaking, to relax himself.

"Goodnight, brave little agent," she whispered to him. she blinked out.

Ness didn't fall asleep for another hour.

_This thing,_ he thought with terror, _makes Giygas look like Bowser._

_I'm not going back there._


	7. Revolution

It was widely-accepted as fact in Zero City that Yahtzee Croshaw's treatment of citizens was, irksomely, determined by his opinion of the quality of their related video game or games. Chell or Gordon Freeman could go to city hall asking for tea and Yahtzee would provide biscuits. If Master Chief or Sonic asked Yahtzee for the time of day, Yahtzee would provide them with a rubber hammer, a fist-sized lump of granite, and instructions on how to make a sundial. Written in Polish.

This was very evident when Kratos, Galen Marek, and Master Chief were called in by Yahtzee for their first covert assignment.

"Have a seat," the 2.5 dimensional British man said to the three when they entered. There were only two chairs across from Yahtzee at the desk in his study. One bore the nametag: _Starkiller_, and another: _Kratos._

"There's a beanbag chair in the imp closet just outside," Yahtzee informed John.

"I'd rather stand," John-117 said.

"Fine, then. Be a tosser. Computer-tary!" he said.

Cortana projected next to the desk with a sigh. "Are you boys ready for the presentation?" she asked those assembled.

All four nodded and/or grunted their readiness.

A projector screen descended over the wall to Yahtzee's right and the lights flicked off. Darryl appeared next to the screen, standing upright and solemnly with a metal pointer in hand.

Cortana cleared her throat and began to narrate a slideshow that flashed onto the screen as Darryl pointed at the more relevant parts.

"Just three days ago, a massive heist occurred in the extraterrestrial Celestial district. It occurred, oddly enough, at the Museum of Extraterrestrial History still under construction. The most notable stolen item was a Type-25 Troop Carrier, or Spirit. Also reported missing were multiple weapons and vehicles from various alien cultures that arrived on Earth in one reality or another." Darryl pointed at a slide showing several furious extraterrestrials gathered outside an exploded wall.

"The Spirit still contained its functioning engine. The weapon displays were covered in latex, so quite obviously the thieves were wearing gloves. What the thieves failed to conceal were their small, frantic footsteps." Darryl pointed at the slide with the dirty, small, frantic footsteps.

"Most of the footsteps belonged to Unggoy. The shoeprints most likely were from a troop of koopas. The most interesting connection, though, is to a recent series of sizeable transactions between Nook Enterprises and one Jee Wrunt. I couldn't make that make up if I wanted to." Darryl shook his head and pointed to a slide showing a large check bearing a clumsy signature in green crayon.

"Now the more serious business. Yesterday, a suspicious amount of steel, rivets, and other assorted building material necessities were intercepted on their way to one Mr. Jee Wrunt. _In the middle of the old junkyard._ Police Commissioner Eleanor Lamb and a few lightly armed ZCPD officers traveled to the junkyard to locate the shipments' source. Once in the denser part of the dump, they found themselves under heavy fire from concealed gun and laser turrets in the trash heaps." Darryl pointed to the scorch marks and bullet holes on the ZCPD transport, next to an incensed vortigaunt officer.

"Finally, Yahtzee found this letter in his mailbox this morning." Cortana produced a holographic letter and read.

'Dear Mr. Mayor-man Jenga,

I am regret to inform you that your city will be in attack very shortly. The Underling Revolution will be boxers and Jonathan brief and Swift. and deadly. Do not try to stop us; we have a secret weapon and many weapons and vehicles. We are trained in gorilla warfare. We can has your Cities.

Triumphantly,

Overlord Pidlak'

"Needless to say, their leader is an idiot. Since Yahtzee hired you—and a few other characters—out to do his bidding, I thought you three would be the ones to rely on to handle the situation quietly," Cortana finished.

"Quietly?" Kratos asked.

"It's important that nobody gets panicked over this," Cortana told him. "There are already rumors about the growing Zero City crime underworld. The _last_ thing we need is a rebellion on our hands."  
"What vehicle are we taking there?" Galen asked.

"Well," Darryl said, "we were originally going to assign you a standard ZCPD transport, but then Cortana decided you'd be better off with a Warthog."

Kratos' expression was one of confusion. John was just short of performing a fist pump, and Starkiller just raised one eyebrow.

"Since you're all bubbling with enthusiasm," Yahtzee said, "could the three of you pack your weapons and get going?"

"Do you have some important mayoral business to get back to?" Chief asked.

"No, I've a review to record," Yahtzee snarked back. He cuffed a passing imp. "Martini, dry."

"Wait a minute," John said, "isn't Eleanor more than powerful enough to take out the base herself?"

"The gun turrets tore her apart," Yahtzee said. "Her torso is still piecing itself back together."

Cortana winced. "Boys, get back here at three o' clock once you've suited up and collected your weaponry. The Warthog will be waiting."

* * *

Chief practically kicked open the door to his apartment, charged with ecstatic energy. He pulled the rocket launcher out of his closet and was going for the assault rifle and shotgun under his bed when he noticed an imp on his bed. It was holding an envelope.

Chief took the envelope, which was addressed simply to _Chief_, and opened it. Inside was a small crystalline chip, the type normally designed to insert into the back of his helmet. He did so.

_Glad you finally received the chip,_ Cortana chimed in his head. _You didn't think I was going to let you go on this mission alone, did you?_

"I did," Chief admitted. "I guess that was stupid."

_Yes. Yes it is. Get your guns together and get some rest. You'll need it._

* * *

Kratos lifted the Blades of Exile from the mantle above his hearth.

"When I return, this flame will be fueled by the carcasses of my enemies!" he shouted to no one in particular.

He strapped the Bow of Apollo to his back and ran back out of his house, roaring at the sky.

* * *

Galen Marek "Starkiller" put one extra lightsaber in his belt, just in case.

That was all.

* * *

"I hope you're all ready," Cortana said, addressing the newly-dubbed Badass Triumvirate. "Chief will drive, since he has the most experience. Who wants to take the turret position?"

"I will," said Starkiller. He stroked his chin, one eyebrow raised at the Warthog. "Wheels, eh?"

Cortana frowned. 'Do you have a problem with wheels?"

"No, no. Of course not. Just a little... _primitive._"

Kratos looked surprised. "Primitive?" he exclaimed (very loudly). "This machine is a _marvel_ of future warfare! A projectile weapon on the rear, fueled by _fire and water from the inside!_ How can you not appreciate this?"

Starkiller shrugged. "There's nothing that floating can't improve."

Kratos pushed aside Chief and stepped through Cortana, eyes narrowed.

"Do you know who could float?" Kratos asked quietly (for once). "The gods. Do you know of how I dealt with the gods?" Galen opened his mouth to respond, but was too late."

"I HEWED THEM LIMB FROM LIMB, CLEAVED THEIR MISERABLE CARCASSES LIKE SO MANY ROASTED SWINES! HERCULES, HERMES, HELIOS, EVEN ZEUS, KING OF THE GODS WAS NO MATCH FOR MY FURY! _FLOATING DID THEM NO SERVICE!_" Kratos finished, panting.

"You wanna ride shotgun?" Chief asked.

"Fine," Kratos grunted.

"Excellent!" said Cortana. "You know where the dump is, right?"

"Northeast, by Lake Ruto."

"Perfect." Cortana saluted the Triumvirate. "Good luck, boys. I'll be in touch." The three saluted back and Chief drove them out of Yahtzee's parking lot.

Cortana projected back inside to Yahtzee.

"There goes your three-man army, Yahtzee," Cortana said.

"I hope they can handle those slack-jawed dunces," Yahtzee said.

"Yahtzee, even _you_ can understand that those three have fought through tougher situations."

"I wasn't referring to the rebels," Yahtzee laughed.

Cortana sighed.

* * *

The Warthog tore through the busy streets of the Zero City uptown (proper name: Upper Zero) as fast it could without blindsiding the other vehicles. Chief, Kratos, and Starkiller had the radio turned up (though no definite decision could be reached on the station) and were communicating through jubilant shouts, reveling in the raw exhilaration of speed and the anticipation of their mission. Never did their behavior descend into douchebaggery, mind you, but their hearts and minds were a-whirl with excitement.

As they reached a red light going up Route 360, the primary service radio beside the steering wheel began to buzz. Chief, still laughing, told Kratos and Galen to quiet down.

"Hello?" he said into the radio.

"Hello, John," said a female voice in polite Received Pronunciation.

Chief felt his smile crack and a chill run down his spine.

"Hey, Eleanor," Chief said. Kratos and Galen froze and listened to the transmission with trepidation.

"That's _Commissioner_ _Lamb_ to you," she responded.

"How's you recovery going?"

"Near finished," she said. "I'm calling from the hospital. Anyhow, seeing as I was temporarily indisposed, I decided to go on a little psychic patrol of Common and _what do I find_? Yahtzee's fucking secret private army tearing up the highway to suppress a rebellion _behind my back_. I'd like it, first of all, if Mr. Mayor didn't assemble personal strike squads, which is _against the original Zero City charter_. Second, what the _fuck_ do you three think you're doing getting ready to ignite a destructive firefight just outside residential zones? I should head right out and blow the three of you back to Space-Marineland!"

The Badass Triumvirate was silent as Chief drove. If Eleanor Lamb wanted to disintegrate them, electrocute them, or fill them with flesh-eating insects, she could. She was fairly high in the list of Top Ten Most Powerful People in Zero City; Kratos had mistaken her for a foreign god when she moved there.

"Trust us, Commissioner," Chief said. "This isn't going to get beyond the boundaries of the junkyard. SPARTAN's honor." Kratos' eyebrows rose at this.

Eleanor sighed. "I suppose you expect me to look past your penchant for inducing fiery explosions and collapsing architecture—actually, I'd say all _three_ of you have that problem—and allow you to complete this mission dangerously close to some innocent homeowners, yes? Fine, but—" Eleanor stopped abruptly as a loud _snap!_ was heard in the background, probably a section of vertebrae popping back into place.

"If you botch this," she continued, "I'm overseeing your punishment. I can be _very_ good at improvising. You three have a nice day." The transmission cut off.

"I think that about says it all," Starkiller said.

The tall buildings had mostly disappeared, replaced by the occasional few utility structures dotting drying meadows. The wreckage of the old junkyard jutted into the sky ahead.

Chief stopped the Warthog and zoomed in on the trash with his visor as best he could.

"I'm not seeing much," he said.

"Let me search it," said Starkiller. He emptied his mind and concentrated on the junkyard with the Force.

"Lots of life," he reported. "_Tons_ of machinery, heavy and light. I'm not familiar with most of it, so I can't give any specifics."

"So," Kratos said, looking at Chief and stroking his beard. "_This_ is the Spartan of the future? A warrior of steel and fire?"

Chief laughed. "No," he said. "I was just _named_ after the Spartans from Ancient Greece. We're not actually—"

"Of course! So superior that you're quick to deny your noble birthright."

"Listen..."

"YOU CANNOT DENY YOUR GREAT SPARTAN HERITAGE!"

John sighed. "Are you guys ready to infiltrate?"

"Yes," Kratos and Galen said. "Careful, though," Galen cautioned. "I can't tell where the turrets might be under the layers of scraps and dead machines. Don't want to end up like Eleanor."

The Warthog advanced slowly toward the towering wreckage, the sound of the ocean floating in the breeze.

As soon as there was trash on both sides of them, the turrets opened up.

John floored the gas pedal and Starkiller returned fire.

"Shit, we're outgunned!" Starkiller shouted.

"Think fast, Spartan!" roared Kratos.

Chief crashed the Warthog deep into the plasma turret array to their right. Head-deep in sharp, rusted metal and rotten fabric, they sat tensed as plasma fire and bullets flew over their heads or into their thick trash cover. Eventually the firing abated.

"Let's push our way out slowly," Chief mumbled through a clump of moth-eaten upholstery. The three forced their way out of the Warthog and inspected the spot where the turrets were just bolted down. There were narrow unlit tunnels leading underground from it.

"That is our path below," Kratos grumbled.

The three heroes crawled down to their objective.

* * *

A frantic koopa paratroopa tumbled into the throne room of Overlord Pidlak the Unggoy.

"We've been infiltrated, my Lord," the koopa gasped.

Pidlak's methane mask almost fell from his mouth.

"How has this happened?" he asked.

"They climbed in through the turret entry tunnels, Your Greatness. I'm sure they're coming to exterminate us."

Pidlak's face screwed up like an irate toddler's. He whined and snarled through his mask and bounced his makeshift anti-gravity throne against the ground.

"It's not fair!" he whined. "We haven't even started the Underling Revolution and the big boys from the city are coming in to push us around! _No_! Once Weapon is finished, we'll be unstoppable, and they will all learn to fear us! Ready the guards; we will make brutal examples of these three intruders."

* * *

"I hear company arriving," Starkiller announced. The Badass Triumvirate had entered an open, dimly-lit space not unlike a parking garage with a wrought-iron foundation.

A squad of koopas came pattering toward them. Each one had a rusted plasma rifle.

"It's the invaders!" one shouted in its high, falsetto voice. The koopas immediately began firing erratically, their poorly maintained weapons stuttering occasionally.

The Triumvirate raised their eyebrows, as little skill was required to dodge the plasma bolts. With one sweep of his chained blades, Kratos decapitated four of the koopas. The others lost their nerve and bolted, leaving Chief to employ the "Grunt Punt" to dispatch them.

"Is this the best they can do?" Kratos laughed. An alarm went off, and red lights flashed throughout the complex.

"Let's split up," Chief said. "I think we can handle these amateurs individually."

Three Grunts flew toward cover behind an open doorway.

They heard footsteps pounding down the corridor toward them.

"They have automatic weapons!" one of them squeaked. "We need more armament!"

Starkiller soared through the passage and activated his lightsaber.

"One of these would help," he said. He cleaved all three grunts into pieces before they could fire their pistols. He started when a burst of steam sprayed from the doorway and a crooked blast door rose to lock him in.

"Is this a trap?" he called down the hallway. Starkiller laughed aloud, and there were muted growls from the darkness of the corner ahead.

"Kart contingency, ATTACK!" The corridor was filled with the crashing of cheap and rusted metal as a wave of helmeted koopas in motorized shopping carts careened toward Starkiller. They stopped six feet in front of their target before he propelled them back with a wall of Force energy. The screaming turtles met in a steaming, twisted wreck of metal and crunchy shells at the end of the hall.

Starkiller wiped tears of laughter from his eyes before continuing.

A savage roar echoed from the interior of the base. Starkiller felt the walls shudder, and readied himself for a larger opponent. He was surprised to find no larger foe, but Kratos' handiwork.

Before him was a Picasso landscape of flesh, blood, and steel. It was as if the designers of that quarter of the building had carelessly discarded walls in favor of an uneven cavern with turtle shells as tiles and blue blood for wallpaper.

Kratos sheathed his blades.

"The point was to execute the mission _subtly_, without arousing any outside notice," Starkiller sighed.

"I didn't," said Kratos. "You will notice I didn't cause any outside damage to the building. That way, _nobody_ will notice!"

"Whatever," Starkiller sighed. "We should rendezvous with John as soon as possible."

The radio at his hip began flashing a red light. Starkiller removed it and tuned in. "Yeah?"

It was John. "I'm working my way towards their leader's location as we speak. Just take out any reinforcements before they come after me."

"You found him already?"

"When you get far enough, you'll start to notice convenient signs pointing out significant locations. These guys are _morons._"

"I'll meet up with you; Kratos is going to clean up any waiting reinforcements." Starkiller turned off the radio.

The gray Spartan had already left to find the remaining underlings.

* * *

Koopas and grunts were cautiously readying their weapons. In the cafeteria many still remained, if only to finish what could be their last meal. One of the small, nervous reptiles, sitting on a rusty barstool and

chewing on a head of lettuce, cocked his pistol and nudged a nearby grunt.

"Anyone here think it's been a while too long since the Overlord told us where the intruders were?" he asked, glancing at the speakers on the walls.

"Shut up!" squealed the grunt, fidgeting from one foot to the other. "Pidlak isn't dead yet; we'd be dead by now if he were."

"Of course!" boomed a human voice from the formerly barricaded cafeteria entrance. "Or maybe it will occur in exactly the opposite order!" Kratos drew his blades. "After all, before I take part in a major battle, nothing energizes me like a hot bowl of fresh TURTLE SOUP!"

The soldiers scrambled for the exit, and Kratos was upon them.

* * *

Starkiller spun his lightsaber in a lightning-fast blur, deflecting the lasers being fired from the two automatic turrets before him. He reflecting one salvo back at the offending turret, reducing it to steaming scraps. Heavy footsteps from behind him announced John's presence.

"The little bastard went that way," Starkiller said, nodding down the corridor. "He'll be by the water, I'm sure." He reflected the second turret's blasts and pelted toward the end of the building, followed by John.

"I guess Kratos is still busy with those reinforcements," Chief laughed, cocking his shotgun. "Too bad he'll miss out on the mission's epic finale."

There was a loud roar from another segment of the main structure. An entire steel jungle gym landed with a crash into the junkpiles by the lakeshore.

Overlord Pidlak turned around and faced his two pursuers.

"At last, you interlopers will have to deal with the secret weapon of the Underling Army; behold, my Uber-Jackal!"

A huge figure leaped from the ruined roof of the base and landed on the aforementioned jungle gym. It was a Kig-yar, its scaly skin turned dark from heavy mutations and its eyes bloodshot from synthesized mushrooms. Bulging blue veins ran the course of its body, up to the long spines jutting from its head and neck. It was about the size of a small tank, and seemed just as sturdy.

It snorted at the grunt's words and muttered, "Your jackal. Pfft." It hefted an equally oversized focus rifle from its back and took aim at John and Starkiller.

The blast shot over their heads. The Kig-yar struggled to wrest its weapon from the two chains that had coiled around the barrel. With a roar, Kratos launched himself onto the Kig-yar's head and grabbed onto its spines. He dug sandaled feet into the scaly neck and pulled back until the creature shrieked with pain.

Starkiller rushed at the Uber-jackal's chest with his lightsaber held out. It dropped to its hands and knees, trying to shake Kratos from its head. Starkiller leaped onto the back of the Kig-yar and plunged his lightsaber deep into the black hide. The huge creature dashed for Chief with Kratos and Starkiller still clinging to its body. It missed him when Kratos beat at both of its eyes with his fists.

"Turn him around!" Chief yelled to Kratos. The Spartan, still grasping the spines, steered the Uber-jackal to face Chief. Starkiller fired a steady stream of Force lightning into the beast's spine.

Chief found the oversized focus rifle still wrapped in Kratos' chains. He removed them and, with some effort, lifted the gun. He took aim at the screaming creature and pulled the trigger.

He missed. The Kig-yar reached over and tore Starkiller from its back, throwing him hard against a mound of car wreckage. It thrashed its head back and forth, loosening Kratos' grip. John aimed the rifle again struggling to balance it. He missed the second blast, barely grazing the creature. Kratos was thrown to the ground. Chief dropped the gun and threw the chained blades to the fallen Spartan.

The Kig-yar jumped backwards onto another pile of trash. It extracted a small washing machine and flung it at Starkiller, who had been trying to lift the wreckage without attracting its attention. He deflected it with the Force, but at the cost of having the car parts tumble back on top of him.

Twin blades embedded themselves into the Uber-jackal's collarbone, pulling it down from its perch. No sooner did it pull itself up than a beam of energy seared directly into its forehead. Chief dropped the focus rifle once more, satisfied that the Kig-yar was dead.

Starkiller blasted the trash off of him and brushed off the remaining bits.

"Where did Pidlak go?" he asked. Scanning the surroundings, he saw something small floating above the waters of the lake. Pidlak had increased the thrust on his throne to full power and was hovering away at a steady pace.

The lakeshore was suddenly bathed in a bright, orange light as a ball of flame struck the grunt's throne. The throne exploded, throwing Pidlak into the water along with the steaming debris. A lithe, armored figure dashed past the Triumvirate and dove into the water. It surfaced a moment later with Pidlak under its right arm.

"Hello, boys," Eleanor Lamb said. "Looks like you cleaned this place up nicely."

"No problem, Commissioner," said John. "Maybe we could've been a little quieter, but the situation required pretty heavy force."

"We have slaughtered this great beast with its own weapon and purged the fortification of all resistance!" Kratos proclaimed proudly.

"Seems so," Eleanor said. "By the way, I apologize if I sounded a bit standoffish earlier; it was the pain talking, you know." She inspected the unconscious grunt under her arm with amusement. "He'll have a lot of fun explaining himself back at the station."

"Does anything else require taking care of?" Galen asked.

"No. We came prepared for the turrets this time, and Kratos completely destroyed any rebels left inside the base. You did a good job, all three of you. Messy, but effective. I'm still going to have a long talk with Mayor Croshaw about this personal commando thing, though."

Eleanor saluted the Triumvirate and bounded over the roof of the base.

"Well guys, I think it's safe to say that we succeeded," John said.

"Yes," said Kratos. "And I look forward to receiving my share of our glorious spoils."

"Do you think Yahtzee will mind our climactic abandonment of subtlety?" Galen laughed.

"'Course not," said John. "What do you think he expected from us, espionage?"


	8. Wish

_'Twas the night before the night before the night before the night before Christmas..._

From most of the tall buildings in the Common region one could see Lake Milotic. During the day, one could see the light reflected from a large house on the lakeshore. That was the house of Eleanor Lamb.

One the night of December 21st, Eleanor Lamb was enjoying time off-duty. She was accustomed to spending the night in the ZCPD Headquarters if necessary—"_That,_" many officers would say of her sleep-ins, "is dedication."—but she had come to relish nights spent in silky pajamas rather than her Big Sister suit. Eleanor lounged on the loveseat in her den, facing the roaring fireplace, and gazed at the glittering surface of Lake Milotic through one-way glass walls.

Eleanor, even in the comfort of cushy furniture and a Bulblin-skin blanket, was troubled by the approach of Christmas Eve. It was a festive time for most, a time in which most citizens would have booked teleportation to their homeworlds at the Transit Authority, so they could spend some time with family and friends who hadn't joined them in Zero City. Eleanor was nervous for just that reason: she had promised to visit her homeworld for the holidays.

Eleanor hadn't visited in almost a year, and the last visit had been short and painful. She was no stranger to violence or cruelty, but that wasn't how she wanted to spend her Christmas. Her world was in a delicate state; before she accepted the invitation to move to Zero City, she had been acting as the world's guide as they discovered Andrew Ryan's underwater kingdom and its discoveries. Many of the world leaders had been eager to plunder Rapture for its technology and ADAM, but they hadn't counted on just how many survivors were still alive in the decrepit city. Most of the survivors weren't keen on giving anything to the intruding "Parasites."

Of course, most of the survivors were Splicers. Since the overworld had started battling them, as well as some of the few sane people in Rapture, for the right to scavenge the city, many Splicers had started sneaking up to dry land in bathyspheres to "settle." Many of them brought fairly large supplies of ADAM, made by those in Rapture who were able to produce fresh quantities and were trading it for their own survival.

When Eleanor had last visited, more new Splicers had been made in the U.S. and Europe from people who had gotten hold of some Splicer ADAM and, naturally, gone insane. Newspaper headlines were filled with various accounts of serial murders, fires, and freak catastrophes caused by irresponsible ADAM users.

When she left, she had hoped the world was in a state where it could take care of itself, but she had received no confirmation before she departed. There were many nights in which Eleanor dreamed of coming home to find a wasteland of destruction. Often there were skeletons and bodies lying near her when she arrived, holding signs or packages with her name on them. Sometimes there were voices.

A faint purple light pulsated cross the black marble surface of the coffee table. Eleanor tapped the table and Cortana's holographic figure bloomed from the center, wearing a Santa hat.

"Merry Christmas, Commissioner," Cortana said , over the joyful chiming of bells.

"Merry Christmas to you, too, Cortana," said Eleanor. "Please, though, you don't have to call me by my title."

"I thought it ought to be official," Cortana said. "I'm here with an invitation."

"Yahtzee's Christmas party," Eleanor guessed. "I knew he wouldn't forget. Let me guess: December the twenty-third, Yahtzee's mansion, at..."

"5 pm," Cortana finished.

"Tell him I'll be there," Eleanor said. "I know he couldn't possibly have the party without me."

Cortana laughed. Her form flickered uncertainly.

"Eleanor... are you still sure about the teleportation you booked? On Christmas Eve?"

"I'll be there. Good night, Cortana."

"Good night, Eleanor." Cortana blinked out.

Eleanor lazily fired a small blast of ice to put out the fire. She traipsed up the stairs to her bedroom and fell into the warm embrace of blankets against a mattress.

* * *

Light washed over Eleanor's eyes. She snapped bolt upright and rubbed her eyes to clear her vision of the many multicolored dots clouding it. Once she could see clearly and the light from outside had faded, she began scanning the landscape for whatever had given off the flash. There weren't any smoke trails or scorched trenches to be seen, and there hadn't been an explosion.

Eleanor spotted a faint, pulsating light on the far shore of Lake Milotic.

_Might as well investigate,_ she reasoned, entering her closet and slipping into her Big Sister suit. She went through the sliding glass door to the balcony, feeling the chilly winter breeze wash over her. Eleanor took a deep breath and leaped off of the balcony.

Eleanor had never been a fan of motor transport. It _could_ be convenient, of course; she wouldn't deny that is had its uses, but she found it hard to get used to. Anyway, Eleanor didn't tire easily, so running suited her. It took no more than a minute or two for her clear the distance between her house and the landing site. The air around the small impact crater was hazy and gaseous. The light, from close up, was peach-colored and shifted from dark to light and back continuously.

In the crater's center was a small Star.

Two confused, oval eyes regarded Eleanor as she knelt before the crater. The small, shimmering creature tried, clumsily, to levitate away, but only hopped a foot or so.

"How did you end up here, eh?" Eleanor asked it. "You parents didn't leave you, did they?" There were no signs of any other celestial activity in the night skies, and the Star's parents would surely be looking for it if they were nearby.

Eleanor carefully reached out one hand toward it. The baby Star inched toward her, and she picked it up with both hands. The small creature was solid, but it felt delicate, even somewhat gaseous, as if it could dissolve at any moment.

"I should warn you, we're going to be moving very fast," she said to the Star. It didn't show any signs of protest, so Eleanor began the run back home.

The stellar creature clung tightly to her the entire way, until she reached the balcony. Then, the Star slipped out of her grasp and began hover-bouncing about the room.

"Easy, now," Eleanor said, placing it gently on the floor along with a pillow. "Tomorrow we'll see about transporting you back to the Mushroom World and, hopefully, your parents."

The Star twinkled happily. Eleanor climbed into bed, not bothering to change back out of the suit.

"I should call you something," she said to it. "Sparkle? No, that sounds stupid. Twinkle. No... Wish?"

The Star brightened at the last name.

"Wish it is, then. Get some sleep; tomorrow you're going to see your mum and dad again."

* * *

"What exactly do you _mean_ I can't use the portals?" Eleanor demanded. The Zero City Transit Authority was bustling with activity at this time of year, travelers of all species sweeping in and out of countless portals and rifts hosted within the cool gray halls of the vast, labyrinthine Authority building.

"State of emergency," Cortana said to Eleanor, in the dimly lit anteroom that led to the Mushroom World's portal chamber. "Princess Peach declared the portal closed until the situation is resolved."

"That's very vague. She didn't say specifically what the problem was?"

"No." Cortana shrugged. "Anyways, Mario and Luigi went there two days ago, so things should get fixed pretty quickly."

"They left already? Damn it!" Eleanor removed the pack from her back and unzipped it. Wish peeked out nervously at Cortana.

"You found it?" Cortana asked.

"'Found it?' So you knew about Wish?"

Cortana raised an eyebrow. "Wish?"

"He seems to like it. Where are you going to keep him until the portal reopens?"

Cortana shook her head. "I can't keep him anywhere."

Eleanor tried her best to remain civil. "Why not?"

"He's adopted you as his surrogate parent, it seems. He's attached to you until we can locate his real parents."

"What exactly happened to his parents?" asked Eleanor.

"I don't know. Wish, and his parents, must've entered this world through an unauthorized rift, because I can't find any records of Stars using Transit Authority portals within the last week. They might've been fleeing from or chasing something. I'm not sure."

Eleanor sighed. "I'll come back tomorrow. Thank you anyways, Cortana."

The hologram nodded and disappeared.

Eleanor looked down at Wish. "Looks like you mum and dad will have to wait."

* * *

It didn't take long for Eleanor to realize she was being followed. The four hulking figures trying to keep pace with her weren't trying to hide, it seemed. She recognized them by their stance and shape: Hell knights. What a quartet of them was doing in Zero City she couldn't understand, but they were clearly interested in Wish.

Once Eleanor's house was within sight, the tallest of the Hell knights leaped in front of her, and she managed to stop ten feet short of it.

"I am Commissioner Eleanor Lamb of the Zero City Police Department," she announced to the snarling gray monster, "and if you don't step aside I will be forced to apprehend or kill you."

The other three knights ran past her in tandem, each one striking her as it passed. They continued down the hill, toward the house. Eleanor, still holding the Star tightly against her side, jumped from the top of the hill onto the shoulders of a smaller Hell knight.

The creature slipped from beneath her feet as if it was coated with grease.

Eleanor ran into her house, practically kicking down her own door; she found a sizable cupboard and carefully placed Wish inside.

"I'll be only a moment," she assured him. The Star's eyes were still wide with fright, though, when she closed the door of the cupboard.

The four Hell knights were lined up neatly on Eleanor's front lawn. Eleanor's left hand made a fireball that shot directly at the leader's head, yet it missed. She could've _sworn_ the ball had grazed its head, but there was no sign the creature had been singed.

"Enough of this!" Eleanor shouted. "What do you want?"

They did not answer, but turned as if to run away. Eleanor would not have that. She focused her telekinesis on them, trying to pull all four of them toward her at once, but her grip kept slipping. Something didn't feel quite right about them; creatures so bulky would normally be easy targets to focus on, but it was like trying to keep her foot on wet soap.

Eleanor took a deep breath and poured as much energy as she physically could into restraining and pulling back the Hell knights, feeling the very atmosphere become rigid.

The four Hell knights dissolved. In their places were four figures of considerably less menace.

Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde grinned smugly at Eleanor, who hardly had time to register surprise before the collective power of several dozen layered sleep spells hit her like a tractor-trailer.

* * *

Nighttime. It had felt like a nighttime lasting for ages, for eons instead of a few hours. Eleanor's head was propped up against the cold coffee table in the living room, and when she could finally see, there was nothing to look at. Every light in the house was out.

_Wrong_, she thought. _Something... in the foyer._

A tall, faintly luminous diamond floated there, dark violet with a pulsating center. Four other indistinct shapes surrounded the diamond, leaning toward and away from it in rhythm with the pulsating of its inner light.

Eleanor's eyes scanned the house for any sign of Wish, but there was no other light than that from the diamond in the foyer, because every shade and curtain was drawn, keeping out the moonlight.

_My head hurts,_ Eleanor thought. The rest of her body was stiff and unresponsive. Dull pain throbbed inside her skull simply from the effort of trying to move her fingers. Gritting her teeth, she allowed her head to loll forward and then brought it back against the leg of the table. The new pain turned her vision red momentarily, but the vestiges of feeling were returning to her limbs. If she could only—

"Our host is waking up, Miss Koopa," said a voice from another hallway, somewhere to Eleanor's far right. It was oppressively harsh and sarcastic, but also hollow and tepid, sounding like a broken church bell recorded and played back through ancient speakers.

Eleanor's regained feeling was lost again, as another sleeping spell was cast upon her.

"Keeping her under is like trying to sedate an elephant," whined a nasal, grating voice to Eleanor's left. "This is exhausting me. Why don't you just kill her? You said it yourself: she's toothless under all these sleep charms. Or are you _scared_?"

"Quiet! I've taken into consideration that your magic alone might be insufficient were she to react under the threat of death. We can't afford to underestimate her. You barely managed to herd the infant Star's parents into a suitable spot for ambush; I even had to _kill_ them for you when it came time to hunt down the baby."

There came tapping and scratching on the roof, moving toward the front of the house.

"Excellent!" the metal voice said. "The carriers are here. Get away from the containment field, you four."

Pinky and Inky moved away nervously from the diamond, while Clyde and Blinky hurriedly opened the front doors to a pair of lanky gilt digitigrades. The two spear-toting warriors, garbed in blue robes, huge wings folded against their backs, ducked under the doorframe and swooped over to the diamond. One of them pressed its small, masked face against it, causing it to flash brightly.

The other Laguna angel pointed its ornate spearhead at Eleanor's throat.

"She is dead?" it asked, as if trying to conceal intense anxiety.

"No, but she won't pose any trouble if you two noble creatures can help us get the Star out of here as quickly as possible," said the voice belonging to the thing with red semicircles for eyes (and Eleanor now knew for a fact that it was Metal Sonic).

"His energy field should hold it in until we get to our destination," said Kammy Koopa. "Just like we worked out: we'll split the power we first siphon and then sell the Star to the highest bidding power."

Eleanor, feeling that her arms were under her control again, reached up and grabbed the koopa's wand. She jumped up, yanking the wand from the whimpering reptile's grasp.

"So, gentlemen, which of you would like to surrender first?"

The ghosts huddled fearfully behind Metal Sonic, who slowly moved toward Wish's prison. With the last of the sleep spells having worn off, Eleanor could faintly see the Star causing the diamond of energy to pulse in time with his sending out waves of energy, raw stellar magic trying to burn it away.

"We are leaving with this creature, either peacefully or having killed you," Metal Sonic intoned, sounding much more confident than any of his allies looked. "If you try to kill us, I can—I _will_—terminate the energy shield and kill your little shiny friend."

Eleanor made a great show of thinking about that, managing to strike a pensive pose whilst keeping her left foot planted on the wriggling koopa under it.

"I'll take a third option if you don't mind."

Eleanor placed the jeweled end of Kammy's wand between her teeth and bit down on it, and the raw black magic sent electrifying pain coursing through her body, and her vision would have gone dark again if it were not for the white-hot supernova of light that flooded the house. The entire lake dazzled with the light of Wish, who, in his terror had discharged enough power to destroy his energy prison.

The ghosts fled, and Kammy screamed as if her retinas were burning. Eleanor drew one of the angels' spears toward her and sent it flying back, impaling it through the chest, its wings beating frantically in its death throes. The other angel aimed its spear at Metal Sonic.

Metal Sonic's concave chest glowed and a laser blast erupted from it, killing the angel instantly. The anthropomorphic titanium hedgehog aimed it chest-laser at Eleanor.

Eleanor did not attempt to attack first or defend herself. She stared at Wish, still shining bright enough to obscure everything around him with white light. The light became the sort of golden that colors a medieval treasury, and he moved like a blur into the robot's chest.

Metal Sonic clawed at his glowing chest cavity, screamed a multi-toned scream as his red eyes flickered like dying light bulbs, and flames spilled from his back. The flickering eyes went out as the rest of his body spontaneously combusted, sending hot shards of blue metal flying through the room.

Eleanor shielded herself, though she was inclined to let a few shards scorch her hysterical koopa captive.

She lifted up Kammy by the collar of her cloak and asked, "Are you going to shut up if I let you stay conscious?"

Kammy cursed in some arcane tongue and spat in Eleanor's face. Eleanor responded with two electrified fingers to the back of the koopa's neck.

Wish flew to Eleanor's chest and twinkled happily.

"I'd say you handled that a mite better than I did," Eleanor said. "Congratulations, little one."

Eleanor carried the Star up to her bedroom, along with Kammy Koopa and the steaming head of Metal Sonic.

She placed Kammy Koopa in a large metal trunk and locked it, placing it in her wardrobe. She placed Metal Sonic's head upside-down on her nightstand and gutted it, lining the inside with a pillowcase. Wish floated into it, making himself comfortable within his first battle trophy.

"I think I'll bring you with me to Yahtzee's tomorrow," Eleanor announced to him. "I daresay you'll be the guest of honor. Your portal should be ready by then, and you can get back to Starborn Valley."

Wish blinked at her, slowly, and Eleanor realized that he had been able to hear Metal Sonic when he mentioned murdering Wish's parents.

"Or," Eleanor said, taking the hollow head into her lap, "I could arrange for you to stay here. I could take you with me to work if I think you could reasonably defend yourself. You have a friend here already, and I'm sure you would make more."

Wish thought about that, somehow looking very pensive with no mouth and four short points for limbs. He indicated, shaking slowly from side to side, that he did not want to stay. He stared up at Eleanor with eyes that said he hoped she wouldn't mind.

"Of course I don't hold it against you," Eleanor said, smiling. "I don't blame you wanting to go home. As a matter of fact, I plan on visiting mine as well, hopefully for a while."

She placed Wish's head-bed back onto the nightstand and lied down, tired and content as well.

"Good night, Wish. And Merry Christmas."


	9. Crossfire (Prologue)

Gary Jeban awoke to noises from his kitchen. He shielded his eyes from the sunlight filtering into his small, musty bedroom and instinctively groped around behind his mattress.

_Sold it_, he remembered. He rose from the mattress and heard a heavy thud, again from the kitchen.

"This place," a rumbling baritone voice said, "is a _shithole_."

"You're telling me, friend," a much higher voice said. "I'm sure he knows it, too. Speak of the devil!"

Gary peeked into the kitchen.

_Oh, _fuck.

The small plastic table in the corner of Gary's kitchen was occupied by a red fox, sitting on a wooden stool, its forepaws place on the table. Folded in front of the fox was a small blue apron, and sewn into it was ginkgo leaf, with the number 8 inside of it.

"Gary, my friend, please, have a seat!" the fox said cheerfully. "We were beginning to worry if you were going to wake up at all.

Gary wiped the sweat from his forehead and cleared his throat.

"I was going to call you soon, Redd," he said, his Corellian accent more pronounced in his anxiety.

"I figured I might as well invite myself in, see how you were holding up. Sort of cramped accommodations you have here, friend. I do like your taste in decor, though. Lots of brownish shades. Suits you."

Gary sat down across from Redd. To his right, lying uncomfortably on the cracked kitchen tiles, was a huge Bengal tiger.

"Hi, Rowan," said Gary, trying to feign composure. Rowan only grunted, and Gary suddenly felt vulnerable wearing nothing but boxer shorts in a room with two carnivores.

"Now, Gary, I think you know why Rowan and I are paying you this visit," Redd said. He smiled at Gary through sharp, pearly white teeth. "You still haven't paid me."

Gary cleared his throat again.

"You didn't actually tell me when you wanted—"

"I told you I wanted it by the time I got back from the Crossings, in March. It's March now, Gary. 2,500 dollars is all, you've got a job..." Redd's eyes narrowed as Gary's face fell. "You _do_ still have a job, don't you?"

"I did, but, um, I guess they figured Malo Mart really shouldn't become a franchise."

The fox raised one eyebrow. "You didn't get fired?"

"Well, no, that wasn't the word they used when they left."

Rowan rose to his feet, his tail lashing back and forth. A rumbling growl began in the back of his throat.

Redd pulled himself onto the table and placed himself directly in front of Gary, close enough that Gary could smell nothing but the reek of ramen, dead rodents, and his own sweat.

"One week," Redd said. "That's it. After that, some of my friends living here part-time will take what they can from you. _Slowly_."

Redd threw the apron onto his back and slid off of the table. Rowan followed him, almost breaking the front door as he squeezed through the frame.

Gary slumped against the wall.

_This has to end_.


	10. Crossfire (Pt 1)

The metro station in Firaxa Harbor was desolate when Gary arrived in the morning. It was 6:30 AM, and the train was just about to make its first run. The door of the train car finally opened and Gary hurried inside. He was anxious to get to the heart of the island as soon as possible, and living at the northeastern coast meant it would be a long ride there.

As he sat down, someone else entered the car. Gary saw a large bluish-gray wolf, still shaking water out of its fur. It looked directly into Gary's eyes and trotted over to him.

"Gary, how's it been?" the wolf asked.

Still tired, Gary stared at the wolf in confusion for a moment. He finally noticed, through the sogginess of its coat, the white muzzle and paws of the wolf.

"Lobo? Hey, nice to see you! What were you doing all the way out here?"

"I know an owl that's roosting here. Me and Tom are heading back home."

"Is he with you now?" Gary asked.

Lobo looked over his shoulder.

"He probably got in on the wrong car." Lobo tilted his head. "You paid him back, didn't you?"

"I did," said Gary. "A while ago. Him and I are all clear. Anyways, I thought he was back in his world."

Lobo tried to shrug.

"He's a busy guy. Him and his nephews are always going back and forth, between here and there."

The train had already left the station. Little could be seen clearly through the pouring rain, and the relentless drumming of it on the roof filled the car.

"I always thought," said Gary, "that you guys were too attached to your homes to spend much time in Zero City. You always talk about never leaving the Crossings."

Lobo nodded and wagged his tail.

"No one really leaves the Crossings," Lobo said. "The Crossings are made up of all animals; wherever we are, so are they. I was born into them and will die in them." He paused, and added: "But humans usually forget that they're animals, too."

The door at the front of the car slid open, and a brown, sleepy-eyed raccoon dog in an apron entered on its hind legs, carrying a small umbrella.

"You two rain dogs seem to be enjoying yourselves," Tom Nook said. He sat down in the seat next to Gary. "It's been a while, Gary."

"Uh, yes, I guess so," Gary muttered.

"Morning, Tom," Lobo said.

Tom only nodded in reply.

"I heard from a raccoon back at the harbor that our foxy friend was prowling the area not too long ago," he said, wryly.

Lobo growled, and Gary shifted uncomfortably in his seat, thinking of yesterday morning's "visit."

"He was at my house yesterday," Gary said quickly, before he could give himself time to change his mind.

Lobo looked surprised. Tom just raised his eyebrows.

"It was about money, I'll assume. How much do you owe him?"

"How much did I owe you?" Gary asked.

Now Tom's eyes were open completely. Lobo bared his teeth with frustration.

"Damn it, Gary," he said, "why did you take money from Redd? They call him '_Crazy_ Redd' for a reason!"

"Easy, Lo," Tom said. "Gary, you said you paid me off with money from work."

"I got fired after that, Tom," Gary said.

He looked out of the window, the passing landscapes still concealed by the wind and rain.

"My film never got off of the ground, either. Redd must keep a list of everyone who owes anyone money, because that bootlicking weasel friend of his was at my door not _one day_ after the film died, with Redd's offer."

Lobo's expression softened.

"Gary, buddy," he said, "you know that if I had cash instead of bells..."

"I know, Lo," Gary said, smiling. "I knew if I told you I'd taken cash from Redd, you'd either kill me or you'd kill Redd, and get yourself in worse trouble than me."

Tom shook his head sadly.

"I may get cynical once in a while, Gary, and I'm not above an occasional threat, but I've never broken anyone's legs over a few bells, or killed anyone's family for some cash. Back home, Redd's got his dirty paws in _every conceivable_ illegal activity, and he's never been caught. He's a smart bastard, though: he surrounded himself with enough bigger animals to ward off any others seeking personal justice."

"That's exactly why I'm going into the big city," Gary said. "I have some friends involved with the ZCPD. Like you said, there's no proof to convict Redd of anything, yet, but I'd like to at least get some insurance in case he decides to send some of his friends my way."

"That's a good idea," Lobo said, scratching himself vigorously behind the head.

"Work on getting a job," Tom advised. "I know the only reason you won't work for _me—_"

"Redd would put more effort into having me killed, out of spite," Gar said. "Was it always like this?"

Tom looked confused.

"What?"

"I haven't been to your reality, but I've played the games, for a little bit. I know some guy at Nintendo came up with it on his own, with no knowledge of you guys, but I never guessed things would be so _brutal_."

"It isn't really," Lobo said, giving Gary a friendly lick on the elbow.

Tom was almost asleep in his seat.

"Wake me up when we're there," he yawned. "Good luck with your cop friends, Gary."

The train was at its first stop. Gary yawned and tried to recline in his seat. There was still a decent ride left.

* * *

"Well, that sucks," said Luigi to Gary, sitting on a park bench in the Common district. The rain had stopped an hour ago, and sunlight was slowly peeping through the clouds.

"If we had-a some evidence," Mario said brightly, "we could-a just give the fox a good head-stomping. There used to be-a nothing that head-stomping couldn't fix"

"Look, all I really need is to be certain that Redd won't put a hit on me, at least until I find a steady job," Gary said.

"Did you know that he's-a got a chimp as his-a new bodyguard?" Mario asked. "Keeps a katana with him, and seems to-a have a thing for garrote wire."

"You aren't helping, bro," Luigi said. He turned back to Gary. "We can-a keep an eye out, maybe tip off some guys in the area to look out around your neighborhood."

"Thanks, you guys," Gary said, smiling for the first time in three days.

"By the way," Mario said as Gary was leaving, "how much _do_ you owe the fox?"

"2,500 dollars."

"Holy crap. Well, you'd-a better hurry up with the money. Even if he-a didn't say anything, I bet Redd's got pretty high interest."

* * *

Three days later, Gary was asleep. Dreaming of the war, again. _Still_ hadn't found another job.

There was a loud beating at the front door. Gary shot upright, terrified. He walked slowly to the door, waiting to hear the growling of a tiger, or the sound of a pistol being cocked.

Gary still wasn't relieved when he saw that it was Lobo outside. When he opened the door, the wolf scrambled inside, several rolled-up papers in his mouth. He spat them out.

"Read the headlines," he commanded.

Gary sifted through the torn newspaper pages from Lobo's reality, reading each with mounting terror.

"**Nook n' Go Vandalized.**"

"**Nook's Cranny Arson Spree Continues in Midwest: locals blame UFOs..."**

**"Deadly Gas Explosion at UK Nookington's..."**

"Whatever you've done already, buddy," Lobo said gravely, "I'd still be worried if I were you. Things are starting to heat up back in my world, and it doesn't look like Redd is in a good mood."


	11. Paradiso

The battleship _Paradiso_ had become as quiet as the vastness of outer space around it. Every alarm had at last been silenced. Not a single crew member walked the many corridors, occupied the once-crowded bunks, or worked in the hangars and control rooms. Much of the ship was darkened, the light sources destroyed. The only sound came from the hum of the battleship's generators and engines, permeating the whole of the massive vessel.

The population of the _Paradiso_, once numbering more than one hundred, had been reduced to two.

Not far from the battleship's command deck were the Captain's Quarters. It was in lockdown mode: a heavy blast door supplemented by a lethal energy field barred the entrance, with another blast door behind that. A ceiling-mounted security turret inside was aimed at the door, which had been blocked by most of the furniture within the Captain's Quarters.

The interior was a portrait of disarray: every terminal monitor had been smashed, personal belongings were strewn in every direction, and the panels were riddled with bullet marks and the scars of laser fire.

The work desk, in the office right across from the barricaded entrance, remained immaculately clean, however. Lying beneath the desk was the captain.

His hands gripped an assault rifle as a man dangling from a precipice would a protruding branch. His eyes stared at the door with unblinking concentration which, along the blood coating his tattered uniform and gaunt, petrified figure, could have convinced any outsider that the man was a corpse.

The only other living thing on the _Paradiso_ was outside the door, as it had been for hours.

From the outside of the door, the captain heard a voice. It was akin to the sound of wind blasting through a rocky chasm as its walls were scored over and over by iron blades. It was the voice of a snare drum beating from miles beneath the earth, filtered through the maw of a live volcano.

It said: "Only you remain, captain. Only you remain, and there aren't enough doors in existence to keep me from getting to you."

The captain laughed wildly at the door, not realizing that screaming would have sounded immeasurably less terrified. He gnawed at his fingers and tasted blood; he had gnawed them almost to the bone in the last few hours.

"You sound very healthy," the voice laughed. It made the captain cringe at its sound, how its confidence contrasted his absolute fear. The fear he had been unable to hide from the crew. The same fear Dana must have felt.

"Your crew was in exceptional condition, captain," the voice continued. "I can see that you kept your vessel shipshape. The rest of the ships you're carrying also looked to be in good order. I'm impressed. No doubt your trusty staff had something to do with that, but I admit I was worried when my own men had to get along without me for a while. What _did_ disappoint me was their lack of preparedness for my arrival."

"_You were DEAD!"_ the captain spat back. He crawled on his elbows out of the office, still clutching his assault rifle.

He heard scraping and shifting from the corridor, and the crackle of the energy field, followed by a low hiss.

"You should never believe everything your allies tell you, especially when they've been wrong about the same thing more than twice before. Much of this ship has just enough room for me to maneuver, but not many places for your crew to hide from me. I respect many of them for at least _trying_ to fight me, though none stood any chance. The worms, the miserable cowards who tried to flee or hide from me were no challenge to hunt down."

"Of course," it laughed, "it looks like you managed to flee the fastest, eh?"

The captain threw his rifle at the door and pressed his head against the wall. He started at the sound of another voice. One he was used to hearing, yet thought we would never hear again.

"Captain, none of the men are responding," Dana said, her voice betraying her worry. "Everyone at the hangar was wiped out. The medical bay's just been... oh my God, he's heading for us. He's coming toward the armory."

"No," the captain whispered. "No, no, no..."

Dana's voice was panicked.

"David, if you can still hear me, I love you and— oh God, no, he's here, David!"

The captain screamed with rage as Dana's voice broke off into a high-pitched shriek of animal fear. His screaming was drowned out by the thunderous laughter of the terrible voice outside.

"Your wife was a brave woman, captain, at least until the end. Braver than you, it would seem. She at least tried to help poor Private Michaels, tried to pull him through the doors you ordered sealed before I had him in my jaws. He was barely a snack, so young was he. I had my fill by the time I had cleared out the east sector, though. Nothing quite like the taste of scared veterans: tender and gamy, usually a bit runny."

The barrel of the assault rifle was in the captain's mouth.

"Speaking of _tastes_," the voice said, as if just remembering something, "I noticed something else I tasted shortly after I found and enjoyed your lovely wife. Had she told you that she was more than a month pregnant?"

The captain tossed the gun aside. He stood up straight and began clearing away the furniture barricade.

"Are you coming out, captain?" the voice asked mockingly. "I think your men would appreciate their captain recognizing when his time is finished."

The captain deactivated the turret and unsealed the inner blast door.

The voice growled with quiet satisfaction.

"It's time for me to relieve you of duty."

The energy shield fizzled out.

The captain prepared to open the outer door.

"I'm sorry, Dana," he whispered.

He allowed the door to open, and the jaws were around his head.

* * *

_That took longer than I expected_, the creature thought. _But it was worth it._

He gingerly removed the access code to the command deck's mainframe from the captain's chest pocket, then popped the body into his mouth.

The deck was more than spacious enough to accommodate him. The display screen above one of the control panels showed the mysterious rift the _Paradiso_ had been investigating. The rift meant for _him_. He entered the code—again, _very_ carefully—into the mainframe.

_A fine, fine flagship_, he thought with triumph.

He sent the signal to his soldiers, who had been trailing at a distance. They would be happy to have a brand new ship to crew, so many weapons at their disposal.

As the stealth fighter docked and the new crew entered, the new captain of the _GFS Paradiso_ set a course for his destination beyond the rift.


	12. Crossfire (Pt 2)

"I don't understand," Gary sighed.

"It's like this," Lobo said, beginning his explanation for the second time. "Now that we're back in my world, tonight we—me, the rest of Nook's local guys, and you—are meeting with Redd and his friends for a peace conference. Basically, we'll be exchanging a lot of money in order to cool things down. However much Tom hands over should cover your ass."

Gary rarely saw Lobo—or any of the animals, for that matter—wear clothes, but tonight he was dressed completely. He wore a loose black pinstripe suit and tailored pants, as well as a fedora between his ears. Next to his seat was an M1897 trench gun.

"Won't Whitney be a little upset that you're going out to risk your life in a sit-down with your human bum friend?"

Lobo waved the question away. "She understands by now," he said. "She trusts that I can take care of myself. She'd probably be a little bit more worried about _you_."

"Who's going with us?" Gary asked, peering out of the van's tinted windows. The animal village was still bustling with activity in the late afternoon, and he was prepared to believe anyone could be a spy for Redd.

"Teddy the Kodiak bear, Kabuki the cat, and some extra out-of-world muscle."

"Out-of-world?" Gary had assumed that he was the only non-animal involved in the exchange.

"Yep," said Lobo. The driving turtle stopped the car. "Here she is now."

A bright orange glare blinded Gary as the car door was opened. A woman's voice spoke through a bright metal helmet that ducked into the vehicle.

"Nice world you have here, boys," she said. The armored woman sat between Gary and Lobo. Bright eyes locked on Gary from behind a green visor. "You're not from around here, are you?"

"Uh, no, I'm from the... uh, the "_Star Wars_" universe. My name's Gary. You... you're Samus Aran."

"This is she," Samus said. When Gary shook her hand, he could tell she had practiced not crushing people with her grip.

The van sped away from the crowded village center.

"'Galaxy far, far away,' huh? That's funny." Samus broke into a smug grin. "Maybe you know Redd's extra muscle, too."

"Redd's?" Lobo asked. "How did you know—"

"—that Redd also found a bounty hunter? Easy: we both found the bounty at the same time. By some wonderful coincidence, both of us arrived at the Transit Station's bounty bulletin _at the exact same time_. We both thought it would be easy money." She dematerialized her helmet, shaking out a mane of yellow hair. "Don't worry too much about him; he's just some schmuck. Bob Fetish, or something."

* * *

Gary tried and failed to sleep on the way to pick up Teddy and Kabuki. Dusk had just settled, and the turtle was either taking his time or lost. Lobo was curled up in his seat, and Samus had been silent for the last half hour.

"So," she said, "what's your story?"

"My story?" Gary asked.

"If you were from this world, you'd be a parrot. Yes, you," Samus laughed. "You don't _seem_ like the type to get involved in a gang conflict. It was about money, I'm guessing."

"Yeah, it was."

"Was it worth it?"

"No," Gary said. "Not the way it's turned out. But I needed the money for the film."

"You wanted to be a director?" Samus asked. "So you took money from dangerous animals, both apparently with reputations for pretty high interest. Did a job ever occur to you?"

"I _suck_ at everything I try to do, okay? I know how to shoot, but I hate that, too."

"_You're_ an ex-military man? Never would've guessed."

"I wouldn't either," Gary sighed. "I didn't really have a choice."

Blue-green eyes bore into Gary. "Did your parents make you?" Samus asked.

"Not really," Gary said. "They died. They were Mandalorians, so I figured the best way to honor their memory would be to join the Imperial Army. Become a stormtrooper. I was almost killed when I deserted just before the Civil War was lost. When we got the Zero City invitation, I was desperate to get here, figuring I could start out as a film director here before moving back home."

He threw up his arms in frustration. "You can see how that worked out for me."

Samus nodded. "I can understand that," she said. "When my parents were killed I felt driven to fight." The helmet reformed around her head. "I can't say what you should do next; that's your decision to make. You'll have a clean slate if everything goes as planned tonight."

The sun had sank from view, and the new moon offered no light. The car stopped in a minor residential area situated within a small valley between a semicircle of hills. The turtle chauffeur hopped out of the car and ran to the back, where he folded the last row of seats into the floor. The porch lights turned on in the wooden bungalow the car was parked in front of. The front door opened, and three figures emerged: one small, another smaller and lighter in shade, and one huge and dark.

Tom Nook, in grey attire, hopped into the front passenger seat. His forelegs were wrapped around a thick leather briefcase. Gary was amazed that brown-suited Teddy was able to squeeze into the back, even with the seats down. Kabuki, red tattoos vibrant against his white fur and suit, sat in the remaining space.

"Glad you could make it, Gary," Tom said. "Redd and his boys are meeting us at the old inn in the forest not too far from here. Shelley knows the way," he said, nodding at the turtle in the driver's seat.

Teddy grunted with discomfort, trying to lay himself flat so the modified Tommy Gun on his back didn't press against the roof. "Is _he _the extra muscle?" he asked, snorting at Samus. "Another spaceman out-worlder?"

"_She_ happens to be a prized bounty hunter who made a generous concession in accepting this job, knowing she'd be stuck in a van with Winnie-the-Pooh for half an hour," said Samus.

"Easy, Ms. Aran," Tom said. "You too, Teddy, and _especially you_, Kabuki." The bear growled and the cat decided to amuse himself by playing with his stiletto switchblade. Gary was uncomfortably aware of Kabuki's proximity to the back of his neck.

Lobo woke up and yawned (directly at Samus, who flinched slightly at the sudden reek in her helmet). "Is it time?" he asked.

"No," Gary said, eyeing the cat warily. "You should get ready, though."

"Be prepared, be prepared," Kabuki chuckled, running the stiletto blade over his sandpaper tongue with relish. "Foxes are tricky creatures, hehehe, and he's brought the big kitty with him, I bet."

* * *

The forest inn where the meeting was to be held had been maintained for just such occasions, besides being a temporary storage space for some of Redd's black market merchandise. It was mostly wooden and showed signs of almost collapsing in the past. The second floor had been removed as well as the outer walls. Twisted oaks and willows rose over it and blocked it from view unless one walked right by. A thin, grassy path led to it, and the sign had long since been torn down.

A white Lincoln Town Car was already parked next to the inn when Nook's entourage arrived, and some candles cast their dim light from a table in the very center of the building.

Boba Fett leaned against a support beam, glowering through his helmet at the armored huntress who had broken off from the rest of Nook's group and was approaching him.

"Hello, Boba," Samus said.

"Aran," Boba grunted.

"Your employer seems to be well armed." Rowan, in a hat and suit the exact color of fresh blood, was cradling a Type 92 Heavy Machine Gun behind the bar. Boris, a large grey hog in a tight banana-yellow suit, had abandoned his Type 99 Light Machine Gun to root through the old liquor cabinets. A chimpanzee was crouched in the empty doorframe, rubbing the hilt of the katana at his waist, opposite a Nambu pistol and a spool of garrote wire.

"Sure," he said. "Of course, _I'm_ here to provide the real firepower should things go awry." Boba ignored Rowan's threatening growls from behind the bar.

"_Really_?" Samus laughed. "I thought Redd brought you along to look intimidating and otherwise be totally useless. You know, like you used to do for a living."

"It beats squashing _space crabs_ for the government."

"I never needed a toilet paper-man to rescue me from a pit. Some good your fancy jetpack did you, then."

"Shut up!" Boba turned away from her, staring determinedly into space. "You have _no idea_ what it was like: crawling around in a soggy pit for weeks with no fresh food or water, listening to the moans and crying from the poor fellows that got sucked in deep. Pissing and shitting where you eat, and all there was to eat were scraps from animals and dead men. Constantly—"

Samus yawned. "I'm sorry, did I interrupt? Please, continue, I was _riveted _hearing the consequences of being dropped like a bitch into a giant living latrine."

"Bitch. That job could've bought me the high life; a place on some vacation planet, the finest whores in the galaxy..."

"After what you went through? Can you even _look_ at a vagina without going into a coma?" Samus saw Nook and the boys approaching. "It's time I returned to my employer's side. You too, Boba. I'm glad we had this chat."

Redd returned from his squat in the woods in a matching orange outfit. "Tom, good to see you!" he said jovially. He laid his own briefcase on the table. "Here, have a seat, friend. We have _so much_ to discuss."

Each boss' group was arranged in a wide semicircle around the middle table, taking up most of the inn. Gary stood between Lobo and Teddy, watching the two animals at the table with mounting hope.

_Maybe I'll actually make it out of this in one piece_, Gary thought.

"You caused a lot of damage to my stores, Redd," Tom said. "After tonight, if you even _dare_—"

"Of course, yes, yes, yes," Redd said quickly, waving away Tom's warning. "But before we exchange any bells, we need to discuss _territory_. I want more freedom in the UK and Canada. The humans there have scarcely heard of Redd's Market and its _CRAAAAAAAAAAZY_ prices."

Tom took a deep breath and flexed his claws. "Fine," he said. "You lay off in southern Japan and eastern Europe."

Redd grinned fiercely. "_Deal._"

They began, slowly, to open the briefcases. "You know, Gary," Redd said. "It was at my insistence you tag along to this exchange. You are my most recent debtor, after all, and Tom here was generous enough to cover for you. I can't imagine _why_."

"Uh, well," Gary said, managing a weak chuckle, "I _did_ manage to pay him off in time."

There was the silence of every person in a room holding their breath at the same time. Redd slammed his briefcase shut and jumped onto the desk.

"Paid _him_ off?" he said. "You don't mean you borrowed from _me _to pay the raccoon, do you?"

"What's it matter if he did?" Tom said, almost growling. "Just hand over the bells you promised."

"You can shove your bells up your fat raccoon ass!" Redd snarled. "This is a matter of _principles_!" He spun around and dashed away from the table, barking angrily.

The air around Gary exploded in a sudden fury of gunfire. Lobo shoved him into the tall grass outside and said, "Just stay down!"

Tom Nook and Redd were already behind their respective cars, taking potshots with their Saturday night specials. Teddy and Rowan were pacing circles around the inn, sweeping the battlefield with streams of heavy gunfire. The dark little clearing flashed with the light of Samus and Boba's duel; the clone bounty hunter had taken to the sky with his jetpack and was exchanging laser fire with Samus from midair.

A pathetic squeal rose over the gunfire from behind a cluster of bushes, where Teddy's bullets had torn into Boris' hindquarters. The rotting bough of a willow thudded off of the hood of Redd's Town Car, broken by the katana of the chimpanzee, who was in a game of cat-and-mouse with Kabuki. The cat moved like a ghostly squirrel through the branches, dodging bullets and sword blows to cut and jab at the ape's blind spots.

Lobo was taking alternate aim at Rowan and Redd, crouched behind a toppled pine tree to the left of the van. From where Gary was hiding, he could see that neither side could get a decent aim at the other, with the inn between them. He also could see where Boris had dropped his gun when the firefight had started.

Gary reached into a part of his brain he had abandoned many years ago after his "comrades" had tried to gun him down for deserting. He crawled out of the grass on his elbows, his eyes never leaving his target at the edge of the wooden deck. He saw Lobo shoot one terrified glance at him before his hands seized the gun.

Boba was no longer in the air. Gary heard the sound of Samus' charged Wave Beam firing, followed by a small explosion.

"_You bitchyoubitchyouBITCH_!" Boba screamed as his flaming jetpack launched him through the forest. He tried to steer himself to the ground and grazed what was left of the inn's roof, setting it on fire. He managed to aim his uncontrollable flight up, and he could be heard screaming for miles until the jetpack's fuel ran out and he fell to Earth.

The persistent _ratatat_ of Teddy's Tommy Gun ceased as the bear tried quickly, clumsily, to reload. Like an orange flash of lightning, Rowan flew past the burning inn and bowled Teddy over, shredding through suit and skin with cruel claws. Lobo and Tom couldn't hit Rowan, nor could Redd hit Teddy, as the two carnivores were wrestling in a flash, locking teeth into fur and raining blows upon each other with massive paws.

Gary put the gun to his shoulder and took aim, ignoring the flames to his right and the stench of old burning wood. As much as he had allowed himself to forget, he had once been trained for precision.

_Steady,_ he told himself. _Watch the orange. This moment means everything. Now._

He cried aloud as he took fire at the brawling carnivores. He could only hear bullets hitting air, trees; bouncing off of the armor of Samus, watching in the distance with Kabuki under one arm, her Arm Cannon pointed at the chimpanzee.

He didn't hear the half dozen shots that ripped into the tiger's flank, because Rowan's roar was more deafening than one hundred guns. Rowan picked up his gun in his teeth and made a frantic dash to the Town Car just as it began to pull away through the trees. Gary stood up, shaking. He walked unsteadily toward the van...

"Gary, dammit, get _down_!" Lobo said. He pounced on Gary. New shots rang out past Gary's ears.

Lobo collapsed next to Gary with a piteous whine. Gary rolled the Lobo onto his back and saw blood pooling from the wolf's right side and belly.

"Lobo," Gary whispered, "stay with me, _look at me_."

Lobo looked past him at Redd's retreating car, its tires squealing in the dirt. He looked back at Gary and tried to speak. A halfhearted cough escaped his mouth. He stretched out one paw to the man's shoulder and said, "Good shot."

Lobo rolled onto his stomach and died.

Gary was thrown away by Teddy, who threw Lobo onto his shoulders with a choked growl.

"Please," Gary said. "I didn't mean for him to... I mean, I didn't _want_ him to—"

The van had left. Gary was left alone in the smoking forest. In the distance he heard the barking of police dogs. Gary hurled the hog's gun into the flames of the inn and sprinted through the forest to civilization, to the portal back to Zero City. He ran until his lungs burned from the cold night air and his legs ached and his arms were a mess of cuts from brambles and branches.

Gary ran and ran and ran, until his face was wiped clean with tears.


	13. Crossfire (Pt 3)

Gary was living on borrowed time. Borrowed from whom, he wasn't sure, but he was quickly running out. Redd still wanted revenge and so did Tom's friends. Gary realized they had probably rallied for a proper bounty on his head, and they likely received it.

He _could_ warn the police, he had figured, but then his assassins would just wait. Gary couldn't stand the waiting, much less the knowledge that he was scheduled to die. He would rather it end in one night than let it drag on, his fate dangling over his head like a sword.

He stripped his room bare except for a chair propped up beneath the doorknob. A 12x12 inch frying pan was laid at his left side and a three foot-long iron pipe at his right; though he knew which animals would be coming after him, it was the best he could do. All the items he had removed had been tossed into the narrow hallway. Gary sat with his weapons and waited in the middle of the room. If there was one thing he could remember from his initial training, it was how to wait; waiting for opportunities had led to his situation, and now would at least end it, if not necessarily get him out alive.

Gary was glad that he had woken up in the afternoon. Now, at least, he has less time to spend waiting.

* * *

"She travels quickly," Rowan observed of Samus Aran from his hiding place in a dark thicket of pines. The ragged shadows cast by the light filtering through the leaves complimented his striped coat, leaving him well-camouflaged. The Hunter had stopped for a break beside the narrow road, across from her rival assassins. The sky had cast off its earlier shade of melancholy gray and changed into a serene, sunny blue, and the afternoon sunlight turned Samus into a glowing beacon of fire in her damp, verdant surroundings.

"It's a big bloody island," said Boba Fett. "She probably started off closer to the center and went northeast from there. _We_ had to go west first to talk to your boss."

"It's not my fault you came back still soaked with shame and failure," Rowan said, "or that Redd felt like giving you an earful for it. Now, if we had hired _her_ instead..."

"Shut up!" said Boba. "I could blast her shiny armored arse from here to Tatooine in a fair fight, and what happened back on your damned planet, in _your _damned universe was not what I consider fair."

"She's moving again," Rowan said. He started to resume his stalking, and then stopped. "I have an idea," he rumbled. "Instead of whining to me about your hilarious failure the other night, why not wipe off your thick coat of shame in a 'fair fight' with Aran?"

Boba had stormed out of the trees before Rowan had even finished speaking. The tiger slipped soundlessly through the trees, advancing ever closer to his target.

"Boba!" Samus said, seeing the other bounty hunter marching up the street at her. Her helmet dematerialized to reveal an impish, pearly grin. "I thought I recognized the sound of those cute little spurs."

"Enough talk," Boba snapped. "We're dueling: right here, right now. The old-fashioned way."

The grin disappeared once again behind a green visor. "Alright. Let's see just how quick of a shot you are. Does ten paces sound acceptable?"

Boba nodded. He stood back to back with Samus (trying to ignore the woman's advantage in height) and the two of them marched away from each other. One, two, three, four, five...

_Payback's a bitch, Aran_, he chuckled inwardly. _Now we'll see who the real hunter is._

(...six, seven, eight...)

_I bet _she_ wouldn't last inside a Sarlacc digestive tract. I'm a survivor, that's what I am. I bet _she's_ never been eaten before._

(...nine...)

Boba gripped the EE-3 carbine rifle at his hip eagerly.

(...ten.)

_What? BITCH!_

The Ice Beam hit him before he had time to lift his weapon. Samus walked behind the ice-encased Boba and tapped his jet pack.

"A spare one, huh? Looks the same as the one you had last time." Samus' Arm Cannon lights flashed from blue to purple, the Wave Beam color. "Better luck next time, right?"

She placed the Cannon under the jet pack, despite Boba's muffled protests, and fired. He flew into the air like a wayward firework, zipping around without direction, until he plunged toward the coast to the north.

After brushing off some ash, Samus resumed her advance toward her target.

* * *

_Any minute,_ Gary thought. _It's pitch black outside. Most carnivores are nocturnal, right?_ He stood up and shook the numbness out of his legs.

"Come on!" he shouted at the air, "where are you? I know you're out there, you four-legged bastards! I'm ready!"

The sound of the front door being pushed off of its hinges and falling to the ground echoed through the small house. Silence followed, but Gary knew it was the silence in which something was trying to move without being heard. It was the silence of a predator moving slowly on leathery-padded paws with the knowledge of victory clear in its mind. Gary knew that the junk he had left in the hallway was doing nothing to slow its approach, and only the locked door was left between him and his assassin-to-be.

The door groaned and bulged, splintering and leaning off of its hinges. Gary gripped his pan and pipe with white knuckles and braced himself for the impact which would surely come from the other side of the door.  
"Come _on!_"

The great bulk of the tiger flew through the door and over the spot where Gary had been standing a moment ago. Rowan's face connected with the pipe which Gary had swung with twice the urgency of any baseball professional. The tiger fell to the ground, picked himself up, and spun at Gary with raised claws all in one fluid motion.

One paw the size of a dinner plate slammed Gary's back into the wall as another raked 4-inch claws over his face and torso. Gary swung the pan against the side of Rowan's head and used the temporary release of his grip to swing himself onto the tiger's back. He wrapped his arms around the thick, furry neck and tried to squeeze. Rowan rose onto his hind legs and reached over his shoulder with one forepaw to pull Gary off.

Gary felt the claws dig deep into his back and shred through his flesh and the fabric of his T-shirt as he was thrown onto the ground. His weapons went flying from his hands when he hit the ground. Gary's entire body ached, and he realized that he was losing blood quickly. He slid out from beneath the huge cat and snatched up the pipe before scrabbling out of the room.

Gary swung the pipe again at Rowan's head as the tiger came bounding into the kitchen, and the impact bent it. Rowan went sliding into the counter, and, with his hind legs, propelled himself from the counter to the other side of the kitchen. 490 lbs. of Bengal tiger swept Gary's legs out from under him, and as he crashed to the floor he realized he lacked the strength to get back up.

Rowan backed into the hallway before running forward and then pouncing onto Gary. The exhausted human noticed—with a grim sense of triumph and satisfaction, despite his own mind-numbing pain—that the right side of the tiger's head was bleeding. With one massive paw pressing down on his chest and another pinning his numb left arm to the ground, Gary seized the end of the pipe with his right arm and drove it into the wounded side of Rowan's head.

The tiger's agonized roar was so loud that Gary wondered how his already throbbing, increasingly-light head hadn't split in half from the ear-splitting volume. Rowan released Gary's left arm in order to bludgeon his head with his paw. Gary's vision dimmed further, and the tiger he was hitting over and over again with the pipe seemed farther away, and all the pain he had been in seemed to belong to someone else. In the distance he saw teeth falling toward him, and someone else's bloody hand shoved itself in their way. From afar, something heavy and rough collapsed onto him, and the world faded away.

* * *

It took Gary what seemed like an eternity to realize that he was not only outside of his house, but also in a stretcher behind an ambulance. The flashing red lights were enough to blind him halfway, and even blinking brought him a dull pain. Most of his body was bandaged, and he had some trouble moving his limbs. It wasn't till he tried moving his fingers that he noticed his left hand was missing.

Someone crouched next to him. Gary assumed it was a police officer; it disheartened him somewhat that Redd would probably manage to get off without punishment, but at least he hadn't died.

"What you did back there," said Samus' voice, "was unbelievably stupid. It was also incredibly brave, and I can respect that. I'm going to talk to Nook and Redd about your bounty. Just let me know if there's any more trouble."

Gary would've thanked her, except his face was also mostly covered by bandages.

"And thanks," she said. "I've always wanted a tiger skin rug."


	14. History (Pt 1)

"I really do _not_ treat people based on video games which featured them as characters," Yahtzee said to Cortana and Darryl, whose holograms were seated in holographic chairs across from him in his office. He had just returned from Australia, and was ready to revisit a personal project he'd envisioned, yet never actually acted on.

"However," he continued, "if there's one thing that seems to be consistent between video games and the corresponding universes, it's almost _always_ personalities. For example, when I played _Gears of War_, I got a pretty good idea of Marcus Fenix's character: he was a macho, sexually-insecure meathead without a single intellectual bone in his grossly oversized body. When I had the dubious pleasure of meeting the _real_ Marcus Fenix, I received _exactly_ what I had been expecting."

The two AIs looked at each other, nodded, and looked back at Yahtzee.

"Fair enough," said Cortana. "Your persistent surliness has a concrete motivation. Now, what was it you wanted us for?"

"Dictation," Yahtzee announced. "I'm going to write a novel on the history of this grand city, and I decided to experiment with letting my thoughts pour from my mouth and into the ears of someone else before they are recorded."

"Where will our names be in the credits?" Darryl asked suspiciously. "We have access to a wealth of useful information on Zero City's birth; we might as well be co-authors."

Yahtzee appeared to ponder this. "How about," he suggested, "'_With Additional Footnotes by Glowing Purple Woman and Glowing Green Milquetoast_."

"I can tell this discussion will have to wait till the book's completion," sighed Cortana. "Alright, then. Begin."

"Now for the prologue... preface... intro... whatever." Yahtzee reclined in his chair and began to recall the notes he jotted down on the plane from Australia.

"It is not often that a place, a location for people to live, can be considered a grand and noble experiment from its very conception. Zero City is just such a place. Invented—"

"Built," said Darryl. "Built, really, makes more sense, since—"

"_If you don't mind_," snapped Yahtzee, "I'd like to continue. The origins of such a miraculous creation are, perhaps, even more of a surprise: it was created from the remains of a failed 1980's United Nations research project involving interdimensional travel through the creation of rifts, or portals. It sounds ridiculous, of course, and _was_, from a logical perspective. Ridiculous, that is, until such portals were actually made. However, these—"

"Would you mind," said Cortana," if I added footnotes on the specifics of the project? I know it'll probably be mentioned later, but I'll be honest: I really like showing off."

"If you _must_," said Yahtzee. "And—_for God's sake_—can I _please_ get in a paragraph uninterrupted?" He cleared his throat before continuing.

"However, once the prototype Transit Core (_footnote_, see later chapter regarding Core's role in the Zero City mainframe) was completed, the project ran over-budget. The engineers and scientists involved, however, continued to work on the Core until it was perfected. Little is known of what became of them afterward (_footnote_ see later chapter regarding conjecture on Transit Core engineers), and it is often theorized (if not generally accepted) that engineers, scientists and even magic-users from other universes collaborated on the project.

"The Transit Core was acquisitioned by a PMC—"

"Footnote regarding the PMC and acquisition," said Cortana, sifting through her databanks. "I'm on it."

"Why hasn't this Earth's UN released more information on the origins of Zero City?" Darryl asked. "Isn't that at least _tangentially_ important to the experiment?"

"I'll address that later," Yahtzee said. "The company in question auctioned off the Core to the highest bidders, not knowing what they had ownership of. They were beyond surprised at the nature of the sole bidders. The two men were Shigeru Miyamoto and Timothy Schafer, both known for their success in the blossoming video game industry. Unlike the previous owners of the Core, the motives of Miyamoto and Schafer did not revolve around profit; they were humanitarian, more so than previously thought possible.

"The men envisioned a collaboration of multiple universes, living and working together within a safe, constructive environment in order to share solutions to the many problems shared throughout existence. It was the ultimate goal of this project, creatively dubbed 'Project Zero,' to unite as many universes as feasible in brotherhood and friendship, in order to ultimately create a better existence for all sentient beings throughout all realities."

"I find it amazing that _you_, of all people, were chosen to govern it," teased Cortana. "_That's_ the real miracle of Zero City."

"I was going to get to that," Yahtzee said. "_Anyhow_..."

"Not to mention," Darryl said, "how Schafer and Miyamoto arranged transportation for the Transit Core. That, and how they were able to find universes corresponding with video games, and how they formed such a large landmass, and how the world governments reacted..."

"I have another suggestion," Cortana said quickly. "Being the most knowledgeable about the subject, maybe Darryl and I could write up a chapter on the crucial interactions between complex AIs and the city's infrastructure, especially in our relationship with the Transit Core."

"Fine," said Yahtzee. "I can see we're not getting any further for today." He waved the AIs away. "You're dismissed. Get back to... whatever else it was that you've been doing.

The holograms took a simultaneous, sarcastic bow before disappearing.

Yahtzee sighed. He waved down a passing imp in the hallway and asked for a dry gin martini, on the double.

"_Christ_," he muttered, "it's a wonder we get _anything_ done in this place."


	15. Induction

"We've arrived, General Ridley."

These words, spoken by an uneasy Space Pirate, awoke the 50-foot long gray, scaly creature sleeping in the command deck of the _GFS Paradiso_. Ridley blinked his yellow eyes and stretched the length of his body across the deck. The Pirate spoke truthfully; they had passed through the rift and were orbiting their destination.

It appeared to be a planet—_A dwarf planet, perhaps,_ Ridley thought—of many colors: blue, green, brown, and the dark gray of artificial dwellings were all found on the planet's surface, obscured in many places by clouds. It looked, for all the world, like an ordinary planet. Ridley knew for a fact—and his crew had probably guessed—that it was not.

The planet was not revolving around the pale blue star visible in the distance. In fact, the blue star seemed to hardly be there at all, almost as if it was a reflection from yet another world. The planet was rotating, to be sure, but wasn't _going_ anywhere. Ridley also noticed, as they came closer and closer to the planet's atmosphere, that even the twinkling of the distant stars around them seemed false.

_No, not false,_ Ridley decided. _They look like they've been... _imported.

Now that he was awake, he couldn't keep still no matter how hard he tried. What he felt, waiting to hear, no, _experience_ that voice again, the one that awoke him from death and called him through the rift, was indescribable. The mere recollection of that voice sent him into what he thought of as "ecstatic terror"; human psychologists would have called it "aversion/compulsion," his combined fear and adoration of whatever being had spoken to him in death.

_In death._ With or without the wondrous/horrific summons, that last death would have been the most terrifying experience of his life (so to speak), on an existential level. Never before that last death had he ever really _experienced_ being dead: there was pain, or a fall, or something exploding from inside or out, and then he was leaving the wet, warm comfort of a cloning tube, without any gulf between his termination and his rebirth. This last time had been different. Ridley recalled his exhaustion and agony before the Queen Metroid ended his life on the Bottle Ship. He died in excruciating pain, but with confidence that he would just as soon wake up rejuvenated and whole in some remote Space Pirate facility. Except there had been a gulf this time, a very long and deep one.

When one sleeps without dreaming, or does not remember dreaming, all that can be remembered of sleep is the darkness of closed eyelids. When Ridley had died, there had been no darkness, but something worse: nothing. No light or shadows, or strange visions, just oblivion, the complete absence of anything except his consciousness. Trapped in this void, without any perception, Ridley tried to do the impossible: he tried to imagine his own mind's nonexistence. When something that has spent its entire life thinking constantly tries to imagine an end to its thought, it hits a dead end. His brain had shut off, he certainly wasn't going anywhere, and he might begin fading.

_Then_ he had heard/felt the Voice. It had told him, without words or images, where he needed to go next when he escaped this terrible non-place. He had wasted no time getting there, and now they were within the atmosphere of the strange planet. He could see a hangar below them, full of spacecrafts unlike any he had seen or imagined before. They began to bring the _Paradiso_ down for a landing, seeing that a space of optimal size for the ship had been illuminated by radiant lights. There were other creatures there, too; some were obviously robotic, based on their stilted movement, but others were definitely organic, patrolling the hangar bay on two limbs, or four, six, eight, none at all.

No sooner had Ridley and his crew landed the massive ship than he barreled through the ship, past his soldiers nervously who were slowly deactivating the ship's systems, as if they were waiting for something to happen, and out into the hangar bay. He could _sense_ it, whatever had contacted him; it was _there_ and it was _immense_. In his fervor, his mind blocked out all of the overwhelming scents, sights, and sounds, all of the alien creatures crawling, flying, leaping, slithering through the world, all of the bizarre architecture and technology. He launched himself into the cool air and beat his wings until he could scarcely feel them and the wind felt as it could strip the skin from his face. As far as he was concerned, he was the only thing flying through the air above this planet. There would be time, later, to explore this place and familiarize himself with it, but for now he had a more urgent mission.

He was close, very close, _unbearably close_. He was certain that the sprawling, monolithic structure in front of and below him housed the great and terrible presence that had left its mark on him, but as he began his descent, the solid surface of the tower seemed to evaporate before him, and he landed in complete darkness.

Ridley sat on the cold, hard floor of that dark space for what felt like an eternity, panting with exhaustion and trying to adjust his vision to no avail, as there was not a speck of light to see by. He felt like he had flown halfway across the planet, and he very well might have. _It_ was in there, and he needed to communicate with it, no matter what it might do to him.

"Well?" he said, loudly. "I'm here! Where are _you_?"

Nothing. While Ridley was sure that the space he was in was large, he felt as if he was in a sensory-deprivation tank. It reminded him of his last death, and he was scared.

"_WHERE ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU?_" Ridley roared into the darkness and emptied a firestorm of plasma into the room, and somehow he heard no echo and saw nothing illuminated by his breath. "If you don't reveal yourself," he bellowed, "I will tear my out of here and _raze this fucking planet to the ground!_" He didn't know it, but he was blurring through every language he had ever accumulated or even only heard, desperate for a response from the invisible thing occupying the room with him. Ridley ended in his native tongue, a hoarse, guttural hiss in the brink of hysteria: "_I WANT ANSWERS!_"

Something moved. Not physically, _in his head_.

_Answers you shall have, then._ Ridley thought the floor had disappeared as the Voice said this, but he realized that he had been lifted off of the ground. He also realized where this thing was: it was everywhere, surrounding him, engulfing him. Every molecule in the room, every particle of the air he breathed was a part of this vast, nebulous being.

_When I held you in the gap between life and death, I left you with instructions to come here, and you have. Now you may know your purpose, thought it is not new to you: you are to be my general, Ridley._

_Your _what? Ridley thought at it. _What could you possibly require of me?_

_The demons and deities that I call shall have their places,_ it continued, _but I see in you something even many of them lack. You have impressive power tempered by cunning, and experience in swaying the minds and hearts of those you command. Power. Intelligence. Charisma. You have these, and I will let you use them in the service of my designs._

The Voice revealed itself to Ridley all at once, as well as the scope of its plans, and Ridley could not manage even a sound in response.

_Are you prepared, General Ridley?_ the Sprite asked.

"No," Ridley managed to whisper. He gazed in awe at the beautiful, disorienting presence before him. "But I will _make myself ready_."

_Then you may leave,_ the Sprite said, removing the ceiling for Ridley. _Explore your new domain. Meet your new allies and subjects. You may even find your Mother Brain._

Ridley could not have cared less about Mother Brain. He scraped the floor in obeisance to his new master. He flew out of the building into the welcoming air of his new home, roaring his exultation to sky. There was much to see and learn here, this he understood, and he was eager to see and learn everything.

Ridley would gladly die a thousand more times for the Sprite, and would gladly remain dead as long as he had to, if only to please it.  
Vengeance.

Conquest.  
Paradise.

He knew without a doubt that, in time, all would be his.


	16. First

"Start talking."

"Who told you?"

"A guy who knew a guy who apparently happened to be present for this. Go."  
John sighed. He would have preferred that nobody found out about his encounter more than a month ago, at least not until things had panned out. Yet Gordon had already found out.

"Fine," he said, "where should I start?"

"The point where things became interesting," Gordon said.

To John it felt as if the entire Pixel Palace, as small a lounge as it was, had become much quieter, as if every ear in the building had tuned in to hear his conversation.

"So," John began, "I had gone to the shooting range..."

It was pretty early, so no one else was there yet.

"Is this what you do with your spare time?"

I'm retired, I'd just be bored otherwise. So there I am, hitting the targets, getting into the zone, when someone else walks in.

"And that's her?"

Uh-huh. It's not like I hadn't seen her around the city before, it's just that we'd never really talked before. She didn't say anything to me when she got in, just got in, started blasting away with her arm cannon. We nodded at each other at one point—

"And they call _me_ a man of few words..."

—but that was it. Then after a while she decided to take a break, and it was the first time I ever saw her take off her helmet.

"An action you couldn't fathom."

Now, I'm not a guy with a wide descriptive vocabulary, but when I saw her—

"You were stricken at once by the insouciant charm and genuine friendliness reflected in the flash of her smile, and spellbound by her innocent beauty."

Did you just come up with that?

"No, it was from an interview some guy from The Daily Quest did with Alex; I thought is summarized how I felt when I first saw her, as corny as it sounds."

Yeah, I guess that works for Samus. I felt like saying something, but nothing came to mind, I just kept drawing blanks. So I approached her with absolutely nothing in mind, hoping to God she'd say something first. She did.

'Hi,' she says, 'Master Chief, right? We've never really talked before, have we?'

'No, I guess not,' I say. 'Samus Aran? I've heard of you before, shame we've never really met before. That is, actually talked.'

She nods and asks what firepower I'm using. I show her the Magnum, y'know, 'The Big One', and she says, 'Looks alright. I've never been much of a gun girl myself. Arm Cannon and all that.'

"Sounds like a personal slight."

Well, a little bit. So I make her a bet that I'm a better shot with my pistol than she is with her Cannon, and she agrees to it; she says we'll work out the terms later. So she gets the energy targets, sets up her target run and starts blasting them through the chest, the head, firing really quickly. I have to admit, that Cannon's some weapon.

Of course then it's my turn and I set the targets to go at maximum speed. I didn't miss one headshot. Now, you can talk all you want about fancy energy weapons, but I'd like to see one blaster pistol or beam rifle half as reliable as a good old fashioned gunpowder weapon. Given the choice between an M6D Magnum Pistol and a plasma weapon, I can't imagine—

"Does this end with you proposing to your pistol?"

Shut up. So, it looks like I won, and I say as much. She shrugs and says, 'Yeah, I guess so.'

I remembered that we'd never set the terms for the contest, so I decide to be generous and I ask what she'd prefer.

'How about I see you here tomorrow at around seven o' clock?' she says.

I was a little confused, and she tells me, 'You're one hell of a shot, Chief, but you flirt like a Federation Marine. So, you'll be here?'

I don't know if I could've said yes faster.

'Great,' she says, 'and be sure to bring more firepower.' She smiled at me and left.

"So that's it, huh?" said Gordon. "Thank God she knew you had no idea how to approach a woman."

"Well, it's been going pretty well since then," John said. "We just didn't want all the publicity that would come with everyone seeing us together. I guess the cat's out of the bag now."

Gordon reached over the table and shook John's hand (John having finally mastered the careful handshake). "Congratulations, buddy. I never thought I'd see the day."

"Gee, thanks, Gordon, I appreciate it."

Gordon stood up to get another drink. "You know what this means."

"No, what."

"You'll have to get Samus to agree to kiss you through your helmet."

Gordon's arm right arm was sore for the rest of that day and the next.


	17. Hired (Pt 1)

The plain leading into the eastern side of the Twilit Forest was a burnished gold in early sunlight, the tall grass shimmering as it swayed in the cool morning breeze. The nocturnal denizens of Zero City's wilderness were retreating back to their nests with full bellies, having fulfilled their nighttime agendas. The first strains of birdsong from across dimensions rang out from the trees in a discordant symphony of trills, warbles, whistles, and shrieks. From the east, a figure clad in orange waded through the grass.

Chell climbed onto a small rock to better survey the plain; from there, she could easily see the low red canopy that had been pitched next to the stream trickling down from the forest mountains. She walked to where the tall grass ended and squinted through the bright dawn's light at the tent. No one was under it, but she could see pillows and a blanket. Chell was halfway to the tent when a voice below her knees said, "I'm glad you could make it, ma'am."

There sat a red fox, its snout and forelegs wet, holding a long silver fish under its paws. It sat back on its haunches and jerked its head back toward the red tent. "Please, come and sit down." It picked up the fish in its jaws and trotted away, Chell following behind.

She noticed, taking a seat cross-legged on one of the pillows, that what she had taken to be a rolled-up blanket was, in fact, the bulk of a tiger lying on its side. The cat's huge square head lifted from its paws as soon as Chell sat down, and emerald eyes fixed upon her in a look containing equal amounts of distrust and apprehension.

"I see you've met Asha," the fox said, sitting between Chell and the tiger and tearing open the side of the fish. "She's my bodyguard. Not that I don't trust you, but I prefer not to leave home without one."

"What's the job, Redd?" Chell asked.

"Cutting straight to the point, as usual," Redd said, once he'd swallowed the fish's stomach. "You already know it's a treasure hunt, so you must have some idea of what it entails, hmm?"

"Where?"  
"Hyrule. Where else would one find The Eye of Gohma?"

"I'll need a map."

"Not a problem! Once you get from the port to the caverns it should be a cakewalk for someone with your peculiar level of determination."

Chell did not need to be told otherwise in order to know that the treasure hunt would undoubtedly be littered with obstacles even stranger than what she knew in her earlier lifetime of captivity. The money, however, would make this worth it.

"You said something about flexible pay," Chell said, leaning forward to concentrate her penetrating gaze even more intensely on the fox, who gazed back unflappably while picking bits of meat from the fish's spine. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Of course you don't," Redd said, "but it's entirely reasonable. Your reward for recovering the Eye depends on its condition and the expediency of your return."

Chell raised an eyebrow. "Someone else is interested. Otherwise you wouldn't worry about how fast I was."

Redd waved away her theory with a bloodstained paw. "Didn't I say you shouldn't have much trouble? I'm a salesman at heart, but I'm no liar, Miss... Well, there won't be anything in your way that can stop someone with tenacity so far above the bell curve. Really, you should be thankful for the opportunity to go to an exciting new place and get some fresh air. Haven't you spent enough time trapped inside?"

Chell started in a way that made Asha rise to a crouch. Redd seemed to suppress a chuckle and motioned for the tiger to relax.

"Asha's a little green, y'see, don't you mind her being a little spirited. Oh, did I hit a nerve? I didn't mean anything by my comment, but it's true: it would be healthy for you to do some exploring on your _own_ accord... without the threat of testing. In a way, _I'm _doing _you_ a favor." Redd kicked the fish leftovers at Asha and rose to his hind legs to offer Chell his paw. "So, do I have your commitment to the completion of this simple, profitable, and _cathartic_ task? Hmm?"

Chell rose without accepting the pawshake. "I'll find you when I have the Eye," she said, refusing to meet the fox's smug gaze. She turned on her heel and marched back through the long grass without another word or a backward glance.

Seeing the orange silhouette disappear, Redd snickered and prodded the pillow Chell had been sitting on. A body like nine feet of gray cable uncoiled from its recess under the pillow and raised its head to yawn, stretching open a mouth as black as a smoker's lungs.

"Played her like an Ivory Piano, boss" it hissed.

"So I did," Redd said, his tail fluffing with satisfaction. "She shake much?"  
"Scarcely a tremble. The woman was steady as a rock until you mentioned testing."

"_Good_, I like steadiness," said Redd. "I'm glad she answered the ad first. The Eye's already slipping through my paws as it is: imagine if I'd had to settle for some stubble-faced, wisecracking kleptomaniac as my treasure hunter?" The fox spat. "From what my sources tell me, he'd piss himself before he got halfway through the temple."

"You didn't tell her about—" Asha began. She saw Redd's lip curl and thought better of it.

"_You_ could use a bit of steadiness, pussycat. You don't have your brother's instinct. You're supposed to look _imposing_, not _jumpy._ You're a fucking striped _kitten_ compared to Rowan." He yowled at the forest, and a little mynah bird flitted down from the treetops to the fox.

"Tell the monkeys to pack this up," Redd said, indicating the canopy. The mynah nodded and flew back twice as fast. Redd trotted off with the black mamba whipping through the grass behind him, Asha picking up the rear with her head down.

"I can't wait to get back to the Crossings," Redd said conversationally to nobody in particular, "as soon as our friend Chell is finished with her bug hunt."


End file.
